Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Item

The Structured Employment Interview: An Examination of Construct and Criterion Validity

Abstract
This study extends the literature on interview validity by attempting to create a structured employment interview with both construct- and criterion-related validity. For this study, a situational interview was developed with the specific purpose of enhancing the interview's construct validity while retaining the interview's predictive power. To enhance the construct validity, two guidelines were applied to the creation of the interview based on previous research in interview and assessment center literature limit the number of applicant characteristics to be rated to 3; and (2) ensure that the dimensions to be measured are conceptually distinct. Based on these two guidelines, three constructs were chosen for assessment of real estate sales agents extraversion, proactive personality and customer orientation. The critical incident technique was used to develop six interview items. To test the construct validity of the interview, the six items were correlated with other measures, specifically, self-report questionnaires and managers' ratings, of extraversion, proactivity and customer orientation. Correlations were weak, at best (rs ranged from -.06 to .25). To test the predictive validity of the interview, the six items were correlated with both objective and subjective measures of performance. Predictive validities were stronger, ranging from .23 to .30. These findings are consistent with previous research on employment interviews which have found that although the predictive validity of the interview is strong, the construct validity is very weak, leaving researchers to wonder what it is that the interview is actually measuring. Possible explanations for these findings are offered, and the implications of these findings are discussed.
Type
Thesis
Type of thesis
Series
Citation
Levine, A. B. (2006). The Structured Employment Interview: An Examination of Construct and Criterion Validity (Thesis, Master of Applied Psychology (MAppPsy)). The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10289/2288
Date
2006
Publisher
The University of Waikato
Supervisors
Rights
All items in Research Commons are provided for private study and research purposes and are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.