THE BUSINESS IN‐BASKET TEST
Authors: Ward Lewis B. 
Published: August 2014

An In‐Basket Test is a device for learning about an individual's ability to perform certain management tasks. In the In‐Basket Test the person taking the test is confronted with a miniature sample of the job in the form of the contents of a manager's “in‐basket” – i.e., his incoming mail. These documents, including notes, letters, reports, papers for signature, memoranda, etc., are to be handled as they would be handled on the job, with the additional requirement that all actions, plans, decisions, agenda for meetings, etc., must be put in writing. These written records of the person's administrative behavior are then scored or evaluated to yield measures of performance.

Form I of the Business In‐Basket Test was developed by Educational Testing Service, in cooperation with American Telephone and Telegraph Company for use by affiliated operating companies in a middle‐management training program as a basis for group discussions. The instructions and background materials in the test describe the position of a District Manager in charge of equipment installation and maintenance in a particular district of a large city. The contents of the in‐basket include 25 separate items, many of them several pages long, which present a wide range of problems varying greatly in importance, immediacy, and content, each of which actually had come to a District Manager in one of the Bell System companies at some time in the recent past.

Research personnel recorded several group discussions of experienced executives in various operating companies of the Bell System who had completed the In‐Basket Test individually before the discussion period. From a content analysis of these discussions were derived a set of 11 scoring categories, each with a number of Bubtypes by which it was believed the responses of managers to the In‐Basket Test items could be described in a meaningful way. These inclUded such things as Activity Level, Type of Analysis reflected in the responses, Delegation, Consideration of Others, Decisiveness of Action, and the like. Comments of these and other executives who have taken the Business In‐Basket Teat have indicated that the task it presents is realistic and that managers feel personally involved in finding solutions to the problems raised by many of the items

After the scoring procedure had been developed through an examination of the responses of a number of groups of experienced executives and through the study of recordings of their group discussions, Form I of the Business In‐Basket Test was administered to 50 middle‐management executives and 50 management trainees in three of the operating companies of the Bell System. Their responses were then classified into 41 subtypes of the 11 scoring categories which had been developed. The number of actions classified under each subtype constitute the scores each of these men achieved on this form of the In‐Basket Test.

Analyses of the scores of these 100 individuals support the following conclusions:

Responses of managers to items in Form I of the Business In‐Basket can be scored reliably by well‐trained scorers. (Inter‐scorer reliability estimates are .80 or better for 26 out of 41 scores.)

Many types of response made by managers to In‐Basket Test items are consistent across items. (odd‐even reliability estimates are .80 or better for 24 out of 41 scores.)

Comparisons of the scores of middle‐management executives and management trainees revealed significant differences in a number of types of response to In‐Basket Test items. Trainees, for example, are more wordy than the experienced managers. They are less likely to take action on the basis of the importance of problems posed by the items and they see fewer implications for the organization as a whole in the various items in the test. Somewhat surprisingly, trainees more often make final decisions and take final action on items, while experienced executives seek additional information or see preliminary steps to be taken before final action can be accomplished. Both groups delegated tasks to subordinates to about the same extent, but the delegations of trainees tended to be complete while those of experienced executives contained some element of control in the form of procedures for making sure that the problem would be properly handled. Finally, the experienced executives more often went out of their way to be considerate both in special acts of consideration and in routine expressions of courtesy.

These results suggest that the Business In‐Basket Test should have value as a direct measure of administrative skill for use either in management selection or for the evaluation of management training in business.