Part I. Evaluation of Assessment Methods

Sport Pro sells a full line of sportswear and athletic equipment in 300 shops located in shopping malls around the country.There are over 1500 salespeople staffing these stores, each of whom has a full time manager.Staffing the manager's position, by policy, must occur by promotion from the sales staff.The company is interested in improving its identification of sales people most likely to be successful store managers.It has developed a special technique for assessing and rating the suitability of salespeople for the manager's job.

To experiment with this technique, the regional HR department representative met with the store managers in the region to review and rate the promotion suitability all salespeople.This was a rating based on specific criteria and guidelines. They reviewed:

• Sales results
• Customer service ratings
• Knowledge of store operations test
• Supervisory / managerial suitability rating

A promotion suitability (PS) score ranging from 0 to 100 was then assigned to each person.The process was repeated by the same HR representatives and managers whenever possible six months apart.Sport Pro plans to make promotion decisions based on the average of these two scores.

Over the past year 120 people have been promoted to store manager.The PS scores were gathered, but not formally used in promotion decisions.Now it is time for the company to preliminarily investigate the validity of the PS scores and to see if their use might lead to the occurrence of adverse impact against women or minorities.Each store manager's annual overall performance rating, ranging from 1 (unsatisfactory) to 5 (exceeds expectations) was used as the criterion measure in the validation study.

Based on these data calculate:

1.Average PS scores for the (a) whole sample, (b) males, (c) females, (d) non-minorities, and (e) minorities.

2.The correlation between PS(average) scores and managerial performance ratings.

3.The correlation between PS scores time 1 and 2.

4.The selection rate statistics for males and females, non-minorities, and minorities using a PS score of 75 or higher as a hypothetical passing score (the score that might be used to determine who will or will not be promoted).

Based on the data calculated above please answer:

5.Is the PS score a reliable measure of promotion suitability?Why or why not?

6.Is the PS score a valid predictor of performance as a store manager?Why or why not?

7.With a cutoff score of 75 on the PS, would its use lead to adverse impact using the 4/5^th's rule?Please show your math.

8.With a cutoff score of 75 on the PS, would its use lead to adverse impact using the standard deviation rule?Please show your math.

9.Would you recommend the PS score be used in the future to select sales people for promotion to store manager?Why or why not? If there is adverse impact, does the validity evidence justify the use of the PS anyway?

10.What type of validation study is Sport Pro conducting and what assumptions must be met to ensure that the results of this study are generalizable?