To Assess or Not to Assess, That is the Question Essay

To Assess or Not to Assess, That is the Question - Essay Example I am horrified by science fiction futuristic movies with a plot of enforced conformity and predictability. So when I researched the controversy about the use of personality tests to predict who should or should not be hired, who will or will not behave appropriately on the job, I found myself having some strong feelings. A careful reading of quite a few articles eventually helped me to sort out my particular stance on this matter, however. The controversy itself rests on the foundation argument as to whether human behavior can, or cannot, be predicted through personality tests. Psychologists, especially those in organizational behavior and human resources, want an easy way to predict who will or will not be likely to be successfully integrated into a company, be easily supervised, and perform their duties in a non-violent manner (Baglione, Arnold, & Zimmerer, 2009). It costs a lot of money to recruit, train and build skills in an employee, and mistakes are costly for the company. Com panies naturally want to avoid preventable waste of resources (Baglione, Arnold, & Zimmerer, 2009). On one side of this argument are those who vigorously argue that personality tests can indeed predict this with reasonable accuracy (Boutelle, 2011), especially when focused on Big-Five Model factors and understood clearly, and therefore they should definitely be used (Hogan, Hogan, & Roberts, 1996). They are ethical and legal, if specifically job-related (Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 1971), and they are thought to increase productivity. Within that side of the argument are those who favor normative tests and those who favor ipsative tests (Bartram, 1996). Among the 22% of companies using personality testing for personnel selction, there is also a faction (9.3%) which favor online tests, either normative or ipsative (Piotrowski & Terry Ar, 2006). On the other side are those who say that personality tests are not good indicators. The reasons given include the tendency of people to fake th eir answers or cheat by obtaining the answers from a central source; the fuzzy legality and ethics of sorting out people in ways that might reflect mental disorder or other impairment, ethnicity, sexual preference, and other discrimination-protected characteristics forbidden to be used in hiring choices (Morgeson, M.A, Dipboye, J.R, Murphey, & Schmitt, 2007); and various arguments about whether to use normative or ipsative tests. Ipsative tests are considered to be less reliable because you cannot reasonably use factor analysis on them without having artificial results, and the results apply only within a single person and not across a range of people, therefore invalidating them as being useful for determining whether they are a better or worse choice than another employment candidate (Paul, 2010). Furthermore, apparently up until 2010, the only real defense of ipsative testing came from a company with vested interest in selling ipsative tests for personnel selection, or came from people using that company’s data (Paul, 2010). However, this year a doctoral candidate in Spain, Dr. Anna Brown, won a â€Å"Best Doctoral Dissertation Prize† from the Psychometric Society for her breakthrough methodology that applies Item Response Theory Modeling to Ipsative test data, and thereby overcomes the psychometric limitations of this type of personality testing (The Psychometrics Society, 2011). Brown concludes that the limitations of ipsative data are overcome in that the

Individual Analysis Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Individual Analysis - Assignment Example The professional standards in nursing practice are highly regulated and supervised. In my state, it is mandatory that each institution should have an internal audit program to ensure individual practitioners are up to standard. The professional nurse is expected to have appealing social and moral disposition to their patients. The promotion and the protection of the health of the patients is the key obligation of the nurse. Whereas there are a lot of legal regulations and rules that relate directly to medical practice, the greatest emphasis touch on nursing practices because that is the hallmark of medical practice. Each individual nurse therefore follows the law to the letter and consults widely with doctors and specialists in every activity. The code of ethics of nurses is the epitome of standards on which every nurse must perfectly adhere. In the event that such a code is broken or sabotaged, the individual patients’ lives may be in critical jeopardy. Moreover nursing scholarship is advancing and research that is ongoing about the best practices should be the nurse’s responsibility to gradually assimilate. Without the disposition to know the new standards, one could be on the wrong side of the law and that would bring down the institution of nursing. The Hippocratic Oath which is primarily a doctor’s area is always applicable to nursing. In this regard, nurses are prohibited from sharing particulars of the conditions of a patient with any other external parties. The nursing practice also strives to render services on the basis of saving lives to extent possible within the facility. Any actions that are deemed undertaken on mistake are gravely prohibited. Since nursing is a scientific endeavor in many respects, the philosophy of evidence and materiality of facts is crucial to the medical and nursing fraternity in particular. In addition, the philosophy of utilitarianism