Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota.
J Appl Psychol. 2014 Jan;99(1):38-47. doi: 10.1037/a0034147. Epub 2013 Aug 19.
Ongoing concern about the construct validity of assessment center dimensions has focused on postexercise dimension ratings (PEDRs) that are consistently found to reflect exercise variance to a greater degree than dimension variance. Here, we present a solution to this problem. Based on the argument that PEDRs are an intermediate step toward an overall dimension rating, and that the overall dimension rating should be the focus of inquiry, we demonstrate that correlated sources of dimension variance accumulate and increasingly displace uncorrelated sources of both systematic variance and error. Viewing overall dimension ratings as a composite of PEDRs, we show dimension variance will commonly quickly overtake exercise-specific variance as the dominant source of variance as ratings from multiple exercises are combined. We embed our results in a new framework for categorizing different levels of construct variance dominance, and our results indicate that with as few as two exercises, dimension variance can reach our lowest level of construct variance dominance. However, the largest source of dimension variance is a general factor. We conclude that the construct validity problem in assessments centers never existed as historically framed, but the presence of a general factor may limit interpretation for developmental purposes.
目前，评估中心维度的结构效度一直是人们关注的焦点，其重点是练习后维度评分（PEDR），因为 PEDR 通常更能反映练习差异，而不是维度差异。在这里，我们提出了一个解决此问题的方案。基于 PEDR 是总体维度评分的中间步骤，并且总体维度评分应该是探究的重点这一观点，我们证明了维度方差的相关来源会累积并逐渐取代系统方差和误差的非相关来源。将总体维度评分视为 PEDR 的组合，我们表明随着来自多个练习的评分的组合，维度方差通常会迅速超过特定练习的方差，成为主要的方差来源。我们将我们的结果嵌入到一个新的框架中，用于对不同水平的结构方差主导地位进行分类，我们的结果表明，即使只有两个练习，维度方差也可以达到我们最低的结构方差主导地位。然而，维度方差的最大来源是一个一般因素。我们得出结论，评估中心的结构效度问题从未像历史上那样存在，但一般因素的存在可能会限制其用于发展目的的解释。
