Kansas Administrative Regulations › Agency 21 - KANSAS HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION › Article 30 - GUIDELINES ON EMPLOYEE SELECTION PROCEDURES AND RECRUITMENT › Section 21-30-5 - Minimum standards for validation

Current through Register Vol. 43, No. 28, July 11, 2024
(a) For
			 the purpose of satisfying the requirements of this part, empirical evidence in
			 support of a test's validity must be based on studies employing generally
			 accepted procedures for determining criterion-related validity, such as those
			 described in "standards for educational and psychological tests and manuals"
			 published by American Psychological Association, 1200 17th Street N. W.,
			 Washington, D. C. 20036. Evidence of content or construct validity, as defined
			 in that publication, may also be appropriate where criterion-related validity
			 is not feasible. However, evidence for content or construct validity should be
			 accompanied by sufficient information from job analyses to demonstrate the
			 relevance of the content (in the case of job knowledge or proficiency tests) or
			 the construct (in the case of trait measures). Evidence of content validity
			 alone may be acceptable for well-developed tests that consist of suitable
			 samples of the essential knowledge, skills or behaviors composing the job in
			 question. The types of knowledge, skills, or behaviors contemplated here do not
			 include those which can be acquired in a brief orientation to the job.
(b) Although any appropriate
			 validation strategy may be used to develop such empirical evidence, the
			 following minimum standards, as applicable, must be met in the research
			 approach and in the presentation of results which constitute evidence of
			 validity:
(1) Where a validity study is
			 conducted in which tests are administered to applicants, with criterion data
			 collected later, the sample of subjects must be representative of the normal or
			 typical candidate group for the job or jobs in question. This further assumes
			 that the applicant sample is representative of the minority population
			 available for the job or jobs in question in the local labor market. Where a
			 validity study is conducted in which tests are administered to present
			 employees, the sample must be representative of the minority groups currently
			 included in the applicant population. If it is not technically feasible to
			 include minority employees in validation studies conducted on the present work
			 force, the conduct of a validation study without minority candidates does not
			 relieve any person of his subsequent obligation for validation when inclusion
			 of minority candidates becomes technically feasible.
(2) Tests must be administered and scored
			 under controlled and standardized conditions, with proper safeguards to protect
			 the security of test scores and to insure that scores do not enter into any
			 judgments of employee adequacy that are to be used as criterion measures.
			 Copies of tests and test manuals, including instructions for administration,
			 scoring, and interpretation of tests results, that are privately developed
			 and/or are not available through normal commercial channels, must be included
			 as a part of the validation evidence.
(3) The work behaviors or other criteria of
			 employee adequacy which the test is intended to predict or identify must be
			 fully described; and, additionally, in the case of rating techniques, the
			 appraisal form(s) and instructions to the rater(s) must be included as a part
			 of the validation evidence. Such criteria may include measures other than
			 actual work proficiency, such as training time, supervisory ratings, regularity
			 of attendance and tenure. Whatever criteria are used they must represent major
			 or critical work behaviors as revealed by careful job analyses.
(4) In view of the possibility of bias
			 inherent in subjective evaluations, supervisory rating techniques should be
			 carefully developed, and the ratings should be closely examined for evidence of
			 bias. In addition, minorities might obtain unfairly low performance criterion
			 scores for reasons other than supervisors' prejudice, as, when, as new
			 employees, they have had less opportunity to learn job skills. The general
			 point is that all criteria need to be examined to insure freedom from factors
			 which would unfairly depress the scores of minority groups.
(5) Differential validity. Data must be
			 generated and results separately reported for minority and nonminority groups
			 whenever technically feasible. Where a minority group is sufficiently large to
			 constitute an identifiable factor in the local labor market, but validation
			 data have not been developed and presented separately for that group, evidence
			 of satisfactory validity based on other groups will be regarded as only
			 provisional compliance with these guidelines pending separate validation of the
			 test for the minority group in question. (See 21-30-9.) A test which is
			 differentially valid may be used in groups for which it is valid but not for
			 those in which it is not valid. In this regard, where a test is valid for two
			 groups but one group characteristically obtains higher test scores than the
			 other without a corresponding difference in job performance, cutoff scores must
			 be set so as to predict the same probability of job success in both groups.