On the Application-Files Design for the Study of Competence and Double Standards

Abstract

“Competence standards” are norms specifying requirements for the inference of ability at a given task. As such, they are filters through which task performances are assessed. Standards may vary in strictness, depending on the number and type of performances required. When these requirements differ as a function of characteristics of the performers, such as two levels of either sex category or ethnicity, then a “double standard” is being used. In this article I (a) present a brief review of theoretical and empirical research on status-based double standards, (b) outline an experimental design employing job-application files and specifically developed for the study of that practice, (c) highlight the advantages of this design, (d) illustrate and discuss its usefulness for the study of double standards based on a variety of attributes and pertaining to a wide range of evaluation contexts, and (e) discuss issues related to achieving theoretical cumulativeness and to generalizing from experimental results.