High stakes testing in higher education and employment: appraising the evidence for validity and fairness.
The authors review criticisms commonly leveled against cognitively loaded tests used for employment and higher education admissions decisions, with a focus on large-scale databases and meta-analytic evidence. They conclude that (a) tests of developed abilities are generally valid for their intended uses in predicting a wide variety of aspects of short-term and long-term academic and job performance, (b) validity is not an artifact of socioeconomic status, (c) coaching is not a major determinant of test performance, (d) tests do not generally exhibit bias by underpredicting the performance of minority group members, and (e) test-taking motivational mechanisms are not major determinants of test performance in these high-stakes settings.
Sackett
Paul R
PR
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. psackett@umn.edu
Borneman
Matthew J
MJ
Connelly
Brian S
BS
D004522:Educational Status; D004651:Employment; D006801:Humans; D011581:Psychological Tests; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014495:Universities