The Relevance of the New APA Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing for Employment Testing in South Africa

Abstract

Some of the major developments, reflected in the most recent revision of the Standards for educational and psychological testing of the American Psychological Association and two other sponsoring organizations, are reviewed. In view of the South African Employment Equity Act of 1998, the focus is on psychometric considerations that have a bearing on employment testing. Topics covered include the, conceptualisation of construct validity as the primary objective in test validation; the introduction of several sources of (construct) validity evidence; the formulation of requirements such as freedom from predictive bias, fairness and consideration of the consequences of testing; approaches to preventing unnecessary subgroup mean differences; and the appropriate use of non-test information when relevant norms are lacking. Finally, the implications of these psychometric developments for the training of local assessment practitioners are pointed out.