Opinion ID: 6983495
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Criterion-related validity of the HSSTB

Text: Having concluded that Ford had demonstrated that the HSSTB is content valid, the district court went on to determine whether the test had criterion-related validity. Neither the case law nor the Uniform Guidelines purports to require that an employer must demonstrate validity using more than one method. See 29 C.F.R. § 1607.5(A) (“For the purposes of satisfying these guidelines, users may rely upon criterion-related validity studies, content validity studies or construct validity studies”)(emphasis added); § 1607.14(C)(1) (“Users choosing to validate a selection procedure by a content validity strategy should determine whether it is appropriate to conduct such a study in the particular employment context.”). Ford appears to concede that, under 29 C.F.R. § 1607.14(C), to the extent that the HSSTB purports to assess or to draw inferences about “mental processes,” the test must be shown to have validity beyond mere content validity. That section says that “a content strategy is not appropriate for demonstrating the validity of selection procedures which purport to measure traits or constructs, such as intelligence, aptitude, personality, commonsense, judgment, leadership, and spatial ability.” 29 C.F.R. § 1607.14(C)(1). Further, § 1607.14(C)(4) says that “[i]n the case of a selection procedure measuring a knowledge, skill, or ability, the knowledge, skill, or ability being measured should be operationally defined.... As the content of the selection procedure less resembles a work behavior, or the setting and manner of the administration of the selection procedure less resemble the work situation, or the result less resembles a work product, the less likely the selection procedure is to be content valid, and the greater the need for other evidence of validity.” Although plaintiffs have not pointed with any specificity to the traits, constructs, skills, know-ledges or abilities for which the HSSTB purports to test, we will accept as the basis for the claim that this test requires a showing of criterion-related validity the fact that the HSSTB does test in such areas as reading comprehension and arithmetic ability. The district court found that Ford had adequately demonstrated that the HSSTB has criterion-related validity. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the district court did not err in that conclusion. Ford’s criterion-related study was conducted by the same professional test developer, HRStrategies. HR selected 105 employees, representing four different Ford plants, to participate in the study. These employees had been on the job for three months, were white (53%), African American (38%) and Hispanic (9%), male and female, under and over 40 years old, and had varying degrees of education. HR then utilized 46 Ford supervisors, 11 identified by local Ford personnel as being knowledgeable about the job performances of the employees participating in the study. The supervisors were carefully educated about the study, its purpose and its content; they were required to supply extensive demographic information about themselves; they were instructed in detail on how they were to evaluate the performance of the employees with whom they were familiar and given the procedure to use in the event they were uncomfortable rating any particular employee. The supervisors then rated the job performance of their respective assigned employees on a defined scale for each item within each of eight job requirement dimensions being evaluated, 12 and provided as well a rating of overall performance within each dimension and an overall rating of job performance across dimensions. The job performances of these 105 employees and their HSSTB scores (which were neither revealed nor available to the supervisors evaluating the job performances) were analyzed to examine the relationship between test score and job performance. The statistical analysis performed by HR showed that the supervisors rating job performance did not rate white employees and African American employees differently; the ratings did not differ based on the race of the rater; raters did not rate study participants of the same race systematically higher than they rated study participants of a different race. Further, the statistical analysis showed a correlation coefficient — the correlation between test performance and job performance — of .30. It is undisputed that a correlation coefficient of .30 is statistically significant and sufficient to establish job-relatedness. 13 Plaintiffs again presented little more than conclusory and factually unsupported or legally incorrect criticisms of the criterion-related study, including that the study was flawed because it did not include persons who scored “low” on the HSSTB; that several individuals who had scored “low” on the test had succeeded in unskilled positions with employers other than Ford; that HR had combined two samples of employees in computing an overall correlation coefficient for the full test battery, which requires the use of assumptions of which the Guidelines disapprove; and that the study was flawed because it was conducted after the HSSTB had been implemented as a selection procedure at Ford. We conclude that the district court was correct in its determination that plaintiffs simply failed to provide the kind of specifics necessary to raise a genuine issue with regard to whether the HSSTB has criterion-related validity. The law does not require that an employer, simply in order that low scorers may be included in validation studies, hire individuals who do not pass a pre-employment test. See Clady v. County of Los Angeles, 770 F.2d 1421, 1431 (9th Cir.1985) (rejecting the contention that a validity study must include individuals who failed the challenged test); see also 29 C.F.R. § 1607.14B(1) (“These guidelines do not require a user to hire or promote persons for the purpose of making it possible to conduct a criterion-related study.”) Neither does the law require that a criterion-related study be performed before the test is utilized. See Albemarle Paper Co., 422 U.S. at 433, n. 32, 95 S.Ct. 2362 (noting only that the study in that case had been prepared immediately before trial, and studies “closely controlled by an interested party in litigation must be examined with great care.”). Furthermore, there is no evidence in the record to support plaintiffs’ claim that this study was prepared for purposes of this litigation. At most, there is the statement of Ford’s Robert Lorenzo that he ordered the April 1995 HRStrategies Project Technical Report, which compiled into report form and summarized all of the studies that had been undertaken beginning in 1989, with an eye toward potential litigation. Plaintiffs did present the affidavits of several individuals who scored “low” on the HSSTB but who were ultimately successful in working unskilled jobs in the employ of companies other than Ford. Plaintiffs point us to no authority, however, and we have found none, to support their position that such affidavits are sufficient to create a genuine issue with regard to the test’s content validity, i.e., the statistically significant correlation between the specific skills assessed by the test and the specific skills important to job performance. The evidence is undisputed that in the initial criterion study, roughly half of the participating employees had taken one form of manual dexterity test in their pre-employment test and the other half had taken another form of manual dexterity test. For that reason, the two sub-samples were combined and the correlation coefficient was .30. Although plaintiffs complain that this procedure required the use of assumptions that are disapproved by the Guidelines, plaintiffs make no attempt to provide any evidence to support that claim; the expert evidence provided by Ford, however, explicitly refutes any such claim. We hold that the district court did not err in concluding that Ford had sustained its burden of demonstrating that the HSSTB has criterion-related validity, that is, Ford has demonstrated through empirical data “that the selection procedure is predictive of or significantly correlated with important elements of job performance.” 29 C.F.R. § 1607.5(B). Plaintiffs have failed to raise any genuine issue for trial with regard to the criterion-related validity of the test. Again, plaintiffs wholly failed to present any alternative selection device which might be evidence that Ford’s use of the HSSTB was pretextual. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s judgment that the HSSTB, although it may have a disparate impact on African American test-takers, does not violate Ohio Rev.Code § 4112.02. 14