Using the Caliper Profile for Selection and Development | Caliper
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Using the Caliper Profile for Selection and Development

Using the Caliper Profile for Selection and Development

For the past 50 years, Caliper has matched over 1.5 million people to a variety of jobs in the workplace. From Management to Leadership and from Service to Sales, the Caliper Profile enables companies to make better decisions when selecting or developing individuals who show potential to become top performers.

This fact sheet provides insight into the Caliper Profile’s effectiveness in selecting and developing job candidates within professional, legal, and ethical guidelines. Below are some commonly asked questions about the Caliper Profile’s reliability, validity, and legal defensibility. For additional information regarding the Caliper Profile, please contact your Caliper consultant.

Is The Caliper Profile Reliable?

In general, the reliability of an assessment is the degree of consistency with which it measures what it is supposed to measure. Test-retest reliability data is gathered when the assessment is administered to a sample of individuals taking it on two separate occasions and where results are produced on each of these occasions. A correlation coefficient is usually computed to assess the relationship between results at Time 1 and results at Time 2. With respect to the Caliper Profile, the test-retest reliability across several studies is .81. This indicates high reliability or consistency and is well within industry standards.

Is The Caliper Profile Valid?

With respect to using the Caliper Profile for employee selection and development, this assessment is valid if a person’s results on the Caliper Profile are related to job performance.

Caliper has conducted numerous statistical studies in the applied business setting examining this question. The assessment has been validated for use across a variety of job families (e.g., Senior Leaders, Managers, Sales–New Business Development, Customer Service, Analysts, and even Professional Athletes). It has also been validated across a variety of industries (e.g., Pharmaceutical, Financial Services, Communications, Transportation, Insurance, Automotive, Building & Construction, and Apparel & Cosmetics). The average validity coefficient between Caliper Profile scores and job performance ranges from .25 to .47, which is at or above industry standards.

Is The Caliper Profile Compliant With U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Statutes?

Caliper has dedicated resources to ensure that the Caliper Profile meets all of the legal requirements regarding equal employment opportunity. Below is a summary of the research Caliper has conducted to this effect.

Scoring of the Caliper Profile
Scores are not adjusted on the basis of personal characteristics. Thus, the same scoring procedure is used regardless of race, gender, age, educational level, religious affiliation, or disability status of the individual.

Assessment of Adverse Impact using the 4/5 Rule
Adverse impact refers to a selection process in hiring, promotion, or other employment decisions that works to the disadvantage of protected members of a race, gender, or age group. Adverse impact is said to occur when a selection rate for any protected group (based on race, gender, or age) is less than 4/5 of the rate for the group that is not protected.

(1) Race/Ethnicity: The 4/5 rule, according to EEOC Statues, mandates that Caliper’s job-match rate for any group in a protected class would have to be 47.3%, which is 4/5 of 59.1%. This is the percentage of White individuals who were considered jobmatched based on their Caliper Profile results. Thus, according to our research, Caliper is compliant with EEOC Statutes. Because the percentages of African- American, Asian, and Latin individuals who are job-matched all exceed 47.3%, the Caliper Profile does not display adverse impact with respect to race/ethnicity.

(2) Gender: To satisfy the 4/5 rule, and, thus, be compliant with EEOC Statutes, Caliper’s job-matching rate for females would have to be 4/5 that of males, or 47.04%. Because the percentage of females who were considered job-matched based on their Caliper Profile results far exceeds 47.04%, the Caliper Profile does not demonstrate adverse impact with respect to gender.

(3) Age: To satisfy the 4/5 rule, and, thus, be compliant with EEOC Statutes, Caliper’s job-matching rate for individuals aged 40 or over would have to be 4/5 that of individuals under 40 years, or 48.8%. Because the percentage of individuals 40 years or older who were considered job-matched based on their Caliper Profile results exceeds 48.8%, the Caliper Profile does not demonstrate adverse impact with respect to the age category.

Is The Caliper Profile Compliant With The 1990 U.S. Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)?

There are two issues that relate to employment testing in the context of the Americans with Disabilities Act. First, all persons must be provided reasonable accommodation to take the assessment. Second, the instrument must be incapable of assessing psychological or behavioral disorders.

Providing Reasonable Accommodation
The Caliper Profile is an untimed assessment with a user-friendly format that provides reasonable accommodations to all persons regardless of mental or physical disabilities. Should one of your candidates require any special accommodation, please contact your Caliper consultant for assistance.

Caliper Profile Predictive Capabilities
The only assessments in violation of ADA statutes are those that are capable of measuring psychological or behavioral disorders. The Caliper Profile is an employment assessment whose sole focus is on predicting work behavior. It is not capable of assessing psychological or behavioral disorders, nor is it ever used in that manner.

Summary

The Caliper Profile has been developed in accordance with best practices issued by both the U.S. Department of Labor and the Uniform Guidelines of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Division 14 of the American Psychological Association. Additionally, the Caliper Profile meets the legal requirements of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Studies conducted in applied settings continue to support the fact that the Caliper Profile is a reliable, valid, and defensible assessment for making employment- related decisions about job candidates.

To gain additional insight into the use of personality assessments as well as best practices for their implementation within your organization, please contact your Caliper consultant.


Suggested Readings

Caliper, Inc. (2005). Caliper technical manual (4th ed.). Princeton, NJ: Caliper Research & Development Department.

Landy, F. J. (Ed.). (2005). Employment discrimination litigation: Behavioral, quantitative, and legal perspectives. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

O*Net (2000). Testing and assessment: An employer’s guide to good practices. U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration [online]. Available: www.onetcenter.org/dl_files/empTestAsse.pdf.

Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). (2003). Principles for the validation and use of personnel selection procedures (4th ed.). Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology [online]. Available: www.siop.org/_Principles/principles.pdf.