Entry Level Telecommunicator Video Test Update
Due to our commitment to making sure our tests are the absolute best they can be, we’ve released an update to the PST 2.0 Entry Level Telecommunicator Video Test. Because of these changes as well as our move to a new naming scheme, the name of the test has been updated as follows:
| PREVIOUS TEST | NEW TEST | |
|---|---|---|
| PST 2.0 | ECC-EL 201 |
Important Note: Because of the changes to the new printing (Print Date 11-2011 on back) it is NOT advised to mix the new printing with those you might have left over from your previous testing process. Make sure to secure all new DVD, Tests, Scratch Paper booklets, as well as Test Admin Script.
Test Security and Cheating: Part 1
If your jurisdiction has ever been the target of a cheating scheme or scandal then you are very familiar with the costs of cheating. Writing new tests, conducting new recruitments and administering new selection procedures are time-consuming and costly, yet they represent only a portion of what could be considered the costs of cheating. Perhaps the biggest potential costs of cheating are those incidents where cheating goes undetected, resulting in incorrect selections for promotions or filling entry-level positions. Whatever the costs and whatever the long-term impacts may be, the sad truth is that cheating still occurs.
A cheating incident from 2009 underscores the impact of cheating scandals on agencies and should serve as a warning for individuals with the responsibility of preventing cheating, as well as any individual that may consider cheating. In this case, a member of the testing committee provided test questions to a lieutenant who subsequently provided them to an officer studying for the test. That officer went to internal affairs and an investigation was launched. In addition to scrapping the test, four police officials were temporarily removed from their duties pending the conclusion of the investigation. Two eventually left the department. The cloud of suspicion and distrust continues to hang over the department and the ultimate negative affects are incalculable. (more…)
Update to Promotional Test Reading List
The reading list for the Police Lieutenant Test (PL 301) has been updated to reflect the release of a new edition of one of the books that appears on the list.
The updated reading list table is below:
| TYPE | TEST NAME | LAST UPDATED |
|---|---|---|
| Police | PSUP 301/302/303 | Mar 2012 |
| PL 301 | May 2012 | |
| PDET 201 | Mar 2012 | |
| Fire | FCO 101-EM/102-EM | Mar 2011 |
| FCO 103/104 | Mar 2011 | |
| Corrections | CF-FLS 102 | Feb 2011 |
| ECC | ECC-FLS 102 | Oct 2010 |
Successive Hurdles, Test Weighting and Certification Rules: Part 4
The articles in this series when taken as a whole present a picture of the challenges and potential pitfalls presented in the development of effective selection instruments and test batteries. In addition to the need to make sure instruments are reliable and valid so that they support the selection of the best available work force, they must also withstand legal scrutiny. Unfortunately, experience has shown that local laws, statutes and/or civil service rules that provide the blue print for how HR work is to be done are many times in conflict with exam development and validation procedures. In particular, certification rules that dictate the number of candidates from a ranked list that can be certified for a hiring authority to consider for selection can be responsible for undoing the efforts made to conform to professional standards.
Many individuals tasked with writing civil service rules, particularly in the infancy of the development of merit systems, did not have the benefit of possessing a test development and statistical background. Many systems focused on fairness and avoiding abuses of differing forms of the spoils system or the good ol’ boy system, but they did not take into consideration statistical concepts related to test scores, and in particular whether or not meaningful differences existed between scores. Sometimes, certification rules narrowly defined the group eligible for certification and in other instances; rules were modified in an attempt to address equal employment issues. These modifications often took the form of certification of the whole list which meant the hiring agency could select anyone on the entire list to put through the final selection interviews. (more…)
Successive Hurdles, Test Weighting and Certification Rules: Part 3
In the last article we focused on weighing the tests and subtests that comprise the total selection process. We identified some instruments that should only be used as pass fail and we identified others that can be used to rank candidates. Those tests and subtests suitable for ranking are those identified through the job analysis as assisting in differentiating potential job performance. We also identified an issue with weighting tests and sub tests if we rely on simply multiplying test results by the percentage we want them to weigh in our total. Tests with greater variance tend to impact ranking more than the desired weight. Simply put, tests tend to self weight based on their variance.
Given a simple illustration we can see that tests that spread test scores out (have greater variance) will have a greater impact on the final ranking of candidates than tests that tend to lump everyone together (have less variance). Taking this concept to its extreme, it can be seen that if a group of five people all got the same score on a multiple-choice exam but achieved widely divergent scores on a structured interview, the multiple-choice exam would weight zero in our final ranking and the interview would weigh one hundred percent. (more…)
Legal Update: Smoke Signals
Is smoking the new frontier for EEO actions? Hospitals and other health institutions (the National Institutes for Health in the Washington metro area comes to mind) proclaim that they are smoke-free. Some employers are going a step further and have become smoker-free. The reason is that these employers, regardless of their business, have a stake in keeping health benefit costs down. Having healthy workers would help achieve that goal, and smoking is unhealthy.
Under federal law smokers are not a protected class. But does smoking implicate protected classes? Smoking itself is an activity, not a disability. Nicotine addiction might be an impairment, but it may or may not be a disability under federal law. Another angle is whether smokers tend to be more prevalent in some race/ethnic groups. The Centers for Disease Control issued a report last year indicating that smoking rates varied by industry, but did not go into demographics. (more…)