NCJ Number
139077
Journal
EuroCriminology Volume: 2 Dated: (1988) Pages: 57-72
Date Published
1988
Length
16 pages
Annotation
Psychological tests can facilitate police recruit selection but have certain limitations related to methodological issues and attributes of police officers that predict successful police work.
Abstract
The association between psychological test scores and success as a police officer is represented as a scattergram. The key problem in recruitment involves classifying each person as appointable or nonappointable on the basis of test scores that predict future performance. Psychological tests can help judge degree of impairment, aptitude for a particular job, and symptoms of mental disorder. The validity assigned to psychological tests reflects their usefulness. The most frequent type of validation is referred to as criterion-referenced validation, with criterion validity further categorized as concurrent and predictive. To develop a test of concurrent validity, the psychologist would probably subject all experienced police officers to a battery of tests and correlate resulting scores with some measure of performance quality. A test of aptitude as a police officer with predictive criterion-referenced validity could be devised by giving a battery of tests to all people selected as police officers in a particular year or years and correlating test scores with job performance scores. Tests of predictive validity are much better in police recruit selection than tests of concurrent validity. Effective psychological tests for selection purposes also need to be linked to police job performance criteria. Little consensus has emerged on appropriate psychological attributes to be tested. Until the methodological issue of validity can be resolved and explicit performance criteria can be expressed, psychological testing in police recruit selection will remain problematic. 20 footnotes