Dear DEI Friends,
Many of us have been concerned about bias in testing for a long time. This issue has affected us, our families and friends (older and younger generations), and ourselves, as illustrated in an eloquent quote by Oscar Holmes in his 2022 OBHDP article: "As a high school valedictorian and honors college graduate, I had never faced an educational setback like this before and ostensibly the biggest barrier was my quantitative GRE test score." I am delighted to share an article just published online in the Journal of Applied Psychology that challenges the "historical" finding that no bias exists in testing:
· Aguinis, H., & Culpepper, S. A. in press. Improving our understanding of predictive bias in testing. Journal of Applied Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001152
We make the case that scientific findings about racioethnic differences in the meaning and functioning of standardized testing need to be contextualized within a historical background: slavery; legal segregation in education, employment, and voting; and post–World War II legislation that specifically excluded farm workers and maids from minimum wage protections and unions at a time when 60-75% of the African American labor force were farm workers and maids. We hope this article will be a game-changer and positively influence testing practices and policymaking. It is open access, so feel free to download it and forward it to anyone you wish. Let's get the word out!
All the best,
--Herman.
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Herman Aguinis, Ph.D.
Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar & Professor of Management
The George Washington University School of Business
Washington, DC
https://hermanaguinis.com/------------------------------