Opinion ID: 354271
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Job-Relatedness Of The 1973 Captain's Examination

Text: 50 Assuming that a prima facie case has been shown, defendants-appellees attempt to justify the use of the 1973 captain's exam by arguing that it was  content valid. For a test to be content valid, its content must closely approximate tasks to be performed on the job by the applicant. Washington v. Davis, supra 426 U.S. at 247, n. 13, 96 S.Ct. 2040. Constructing a content valid examination requires a thorough task analysis of the job to be performed. Once this task analysis is performed, an examination can be devised which is carefully tailored to reflect relevant job functions. The E.E.O.C. Guidelines, 29 C.F.R. § 1607.5(a), state that an examination can be content valid if it consists of suitable samples of the essential knowledge, skills or behaviors composing the job in question. Similarly, the Standards for Educational and Psychological Tests of the American Psychological Association, which the reader is referred to in the E.E.O.C. Guidelines state at p. 29: 51 An employer cannot justify an employment test on grounds of content validity if he cannot demonstrate that the content universe includes all, or nearly all, important parts of the job. (Emphasis added.) 52 In holding that the 1973 captain's exam involved in the present case was content valid, the district court stated: 53 . . . plaintiff's expert acknowledged that the description for the Captain's position was thoroughly done. She did not attempt to rebut the content validation for this test, the only one given after defendant became subject to Title VII. 54 The district court appears to have confused the requirement of a job analysis with the further requirement that an examination, to be content valid, must closely approximate tasks to be performed on the job. Thus the district court made no findings as to whether the 1973 captain's exam tested all or nearly all important parts of the job of captain as required by the APA Standards. 7 What is required on remand is for the district court to ascertain from the job analysis the various functions of the job of captain and then analyze the captain's exam to determine whether these various functions are tested in proportion to their importance. It is not enough, therefore, that the various functions of a captain are tested there must be a correlation between the importance of a job function as determined by the job analysis and the weight given to this function on the examination. Without such findings comparing the job analysis to the test itself, no decisions can be made on whether the captain's examination is content valid. 55