Happy Black History Month! As you know, every February is reserved as Black History Month as a way to encourage the citizens of America to remember and reflect on important people and events in African American history. As employment test developers and test users, we would especially benefit from reflecting on the civil rights movement, which culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. After all, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent litigation have set strict legal and professional guidelines regarding tests and adverse impact that must be adhered to with care by employment test developers and test users alike.
Today, we’ll review the case of Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971) — a major court decision that affects test development and usage.
Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971)
Duke Power Co. was a public utility company that serviced the general public in the U.S. Carolinas. The company was challenged for putting a policy in place that would inhibit African Americans from transferring out of the labor department — the department with the lowest paying jobs in the company — into other positions.
In 1955, Duke Power Co. imposed the following qualifications for placement in any section of the company, apart from the lowest-paying labor department:
- Candidates must possess a high school education.
- Candidates must achieve satisfactory scores on the Wonderlic Personnel Test and the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test.
Approximately six years after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law, Willie Griggs and several fellow African American Duke Power Co. employees filed a class action suit against the company for their transfer policy. Griggs and his co-workers argued that the policy unfairly discriminated against African American employees and, therefore, was a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Cognitive ability and aptitude tests like the Wonderlic and Bennett exams are known to have adverse impact against protected groups. Additionally, in the 1970s, approximately only 30 percent of African Americans had completed four years of high school (Educational Attainment by Race and Hispanic Origin, n.d.).
The Decision: The Court ruled that Duke Power Company’s transfer policy did in fact unlawfully discriminate against African Americans. It is important to note that the Court made this decision not because the transfer policy had adverse impact. Although the 
exams used were professionally developed, the Court ruled that “neither [test] was directed or intended to measure the ability to learn to perform a particular job or category of jobs.” In other words, neither exam was shown to be related to any particular position in the company. The Court thus set the prerequisite for all selection procedures: They must be job-related.
The Implications: Unsurprisingly, most public sector agencies these days use cognitive or knowledge-based tests that are job-specific instead of general cognitive ability tests such as the Wonderlic (Sproule, 2009). Test users benefit from using job-specific tests and, if a test from a test development company such as IPMA-HR is administered, it is important to ensure that the test assesses competencies important for effectively performing the job specifically at your agency.
A good starting point for this is to compare the job analysis your agency conducted for the position to the job analysis conducted by the test development company. For more information on job analysis or gauging the job-relatedness of a stock test within your agency, please feel free to email me or comment on this post.
For test developers, the job-relatedness component should be embedded in the test design. IPMA-HR’s Assessment Services Department starts each test development project with a national job analysis as the first step in providing support for job-relatedness. Please check out our website for information on current test development opportunities.
Sources
Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42, U.S.C.
Educational Attainment by Race and Hispanic Origin. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/99statab/sec04.pdf
Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971)
Sproule, C.F. (2009). Rationale and Research Evidence Supporting the Use of Content Validation in Personnel Assessment: A monograph of the International Personnel Assessment Council. International Personnel Testing Council (IPAC).
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[…] we are halfway through the employment law series! In the first two posts, we reviewed the cases of Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971) and Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody (1975) and brushed up on the important decisions that affect […]