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Psychological Selection for Extreme Environments
Published in Lauren Blackwell Landon, Kelley J. Slack, Eduardo Salas, Psychology and Human Performance in Space Programs, 2020
Lacey L. Schmidt, Annette C. Spychalski
Poor selection decisions for any job can result in significant costs related to errors made by weak performers, the need to find suitable replacements, and getting new incumbents up to speed. Typically, organizations invest in assessing psychological characteristics that cannot be developed through training and are developed over long periods of time or even a lifetime (e.g., personality traits, cognitive ability), and are often measured through tests. One important advantage of using tests is that individual applicants are treated consistently. Using standardized tests or assessments ensures that the same information is gathered on each individual and used in a similar way, and this helps to ensure the consistency and quality of selection decisions (Zedeck, 2011). Many psychological factors have significant face validity for work in extreme environments, so it is relatively easy to argue for the application of tests and assessment in psychological selection for these environments (Bell, 2007; Ones, Dilchert, Viswesvaran, & Judge, 2007). However, standardized tests are associated with several legal and practical concerns worth reviewing here.
Measurement
Published in V. David Hopkin, Human Factors in Air Traffic Control, 2017
Standardized tests have many air traffic control applications. These include selection, training, allocation, evaluation, retraining, career development and guidance, individual counselling, clinical diagnosis of health and well-being, redeployment and preparations for retirement. Tests may be used as a diagnostic tool to tackle problems experienced by an individual controller, or as an impartial objective measure of a dimension as part of the explanation for an occurrence. The scores from standardized tests can be accepted as independent and impartial provided that they have been administered correctly. Applied on the completion of training, for example, they can be seen to be independent of those who supply the training, of the training location, and of others who could be accused of divided loyalties if they became directly involved. Standardized tests can also be of factual knowledge to check progress or of performance to measure skill and competence.
Hard physical work
Published in Karl H.E. Kroemer, Fitting the Human, 2017
Most medical and physiological assessments of human energetic capabilities primarily rely on the measurement of oxygen consumption, with the heart rate as a secondary indicator. Standardized tests allow comparisons among persons’ capacities. These tests employ generally accepted idealized forms of external work, often using bicycle ergometers, treadmills, or steps. Their use primarily stresses leg muscles. Since leg mass and musculature are substantial components of the body, their extensive exercising during a bicycle test also strains pulmonary, circulatory, and metabolic functions of the body, but not all of them. The treadmill primarily strains lower body capabilities as well, but in contrast to bicycling, the legs must support and propel the entire weight of the body. Hence, the treadmill test strains the body in a more complete manner than bicycling; however, both omit trunk and arm capabilities from consideration. These examples show that the selection of test equipment and procedure can lead to different evaluations of persons’ physical fitness: for instance, the tryout outcomes of well-trained bicyclists and of well-trained long-distance runners would differ when done on either bicycles or treadmills. A major problem of all these tests is that they do not resemble actual work conditions. So the test results have only limited value for predicting the abilities of the subjects to perform physically demanding work tasks. Selecting persons fit for heavy work
Predictive tools for university performance: an explorative study
Published in International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, 2022
Alessandro Gambini, Marta Desimoni, Federica Ferretti
Internationally, the central role of mathematics in the difficult transition between secondary school and the university is ever more relevant; while we are looking more closely for predictive factors, the role of the results of standardized assessment within the school systems is also increasingly taking hold. This current research is part of this panorama and intertwines the final grades obtained at secondary school level, the results of standardized assessment of secondary mathematics, mathematical performance in first-year college mathematics courses, and more general criteria of college success, providing possible tracks to identify predictive elements. In particular, achievement in secondary mathematics was assessed by a standardized test aiming at investigating knowledge and skills students are expected to learn and apply by the end of secondary school in Italy, covering the domains of Algebra, Relationship and Functions, Spaces and Shape, Uncertainly and Data and addressing skills in mathematical concepts, arguing and problem-solving.
Effects of aerobic and cognitively-engaging physical activity on academic skills: A cluster randomized controlled trial
Published in Journal of Sports Sciences, 2020
Anne G.M De Bruijn, Danny D.N.M. Kostons, Irene M.J Van Der Fels, Chris Visscher, Jaap Oosterlaan, Esther Hartman, Roel J. Bosker
Before and after the interventions, all children were tested on academic achievement during the school hours at their own school. The tests that were used are part of a standardized test battery used by most primary schools in the Netherlands, which has been tested on reliability and validity in a large sample of Dutch primary school students (Tomesesen, Weekers, Hilte, Jolink, & Engelen, 2016a; Hop et al., 2016; Tomesen, Wouda et al., 2016). Tests were grade-appropriate, with third grade students making an easier version of the tests than fourth grade students. All tests were conducted following standardized protocols. The reading and mathematics tests were administered by instructed research assistants. The spelling test (a dictation) was conducted by the children’s teacher, as children were already familiarized with their teacher’s voice and pronunciation. For all tests, the number of correctly answered questions was used as score of academic ability.
Architectural woven polyester fabrics: examination of possible classification of stiffness values in correlation with strength values
Published in Architectural Engineering and Design Management, 2021
Jörg Uhlemann, Natalie Stranghöner, Mehran Motevalli, Daniel Balzani
Because stress ratios and stress levels for prestress and maximum stress under service loads are different for every membrane structure, fictitious elastic constants obtained from standardized methods cannot be used – or only as a rough approximation. Modifications or adjustments of the load protocol and/or the evaluation methods are essential and must be specified individually for each project. This leads to ‘design elastic constants’. However, to provide the design engineer a tool with which tensile stiffness properties of different materials can be compared, a standardized test and evaluation procedure is desirable (Schmidt, 2012). This leads to ‘comparative elastic constants’, see Figure 2.