What Does a Personnel Psychologist Do?

Personnel psychology is a branch of industrial psychology that uses the principles and methods of psychology to handle personnel management issues. Its purpose is to make full use of human resources, promote the realization of organizational goals, and maintain the survival and development of organizations. The name of personnel psychology was put forward by the German psychologist Seth in 1903. One of the earliest researchers who made important contributions in this area was Minsterberg, a professor of psychology who was originally from Germany and later taught at Harvard University. He first applied the psychological test method to career selection and training, and published a book, Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, in 1913. The other is Scott, a professor of psychology at Carnegie Institute of Technology. He was the earliest in psychological research in personnel selection, and founded the Scott company in 1919 specializing in industrial psychology consulting.

Proposal of Personnel Psychology

The scope of application of benchmarks is very wide. Here, the benchmarks we are talking about are

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Refers to the concepts in the field of personnel psychology. Appropriate and accurate benchmarking is the foundation of personnel psychology. The effectiveness standard is sometimes used for forecasting purposes as a measure of employee success or failure; sometimes it is used for evaluation purposes as an assessment standard of measuring one's performance, attitude, motivation, etc. Therefore, the most direct application of the effectiveness standard research is to provide quantitative indicators and evaluation methods for performance evaluation, and as a criterion for evaluating the source of prediction and the effectiveness of personnel decisions. The standard problem has been raised since the beginning of the research of personnel psychology, and it is a classic problem. Since the problem of efficiency standard was raised, it has attracted people's attention and received a lot of research from different angles. In the following, we review several important aspects of the efficacy standard research.

Definition of effectiveness of personnel psychology

There is still much controversy over what is the standard of effectiveness. The more representative definitions are as follows:

Criterion is the standard or judgement basis for quality comparison. He believes that the standard of effectiveness is different from the standard of measurement. The standard of efficiency is compared in terms of quality, while the standard is compared in terms of quantity.

The standard of effectiveness in the general sense is a criterion for judgment, evaluation or classification. Specifically, in the field of study, the benchmark is a level of achievement used as a criterion for judging learning progress; in the signal detection theory, the benchmark is the threshold; in statistics, the benchmark is the dependent variable.

The effectiveness standard is the abbreviation of validity standard in the test work. It is a standard to measure whether a test can effectively distinguish a certain operation or characteristic of the test subject.

In personnel psychology, it is more inclined to define the performance standard from the perspective of performance. For example, Austin and Villanova believe that the performance standard is a performance sample (behavior and its results) that can be directly or indirectly measured, and reflects the organization's relevant forecast sources or The value of personnel decisions. This definition explains that performance should be the main content. This performance can be work behavior or the result of behavior. In addition, it also shows that the choice of performance reflects the value of the organization, because what an organization has. Such values will inevitably choose the performance that reflects such values.

The above definitions can be summarized into two aspects: the first is to conceptually define the effect standard, that is, the conceptual effect standard, which is considered to be an external quality comparison standard or judgment basis; the second is from The metric is defined in surveying, that is, the use of operable measurement to determine conceptual things. In the field of personnel, performance is often used as the benchmark. Therefore, performance measurement is bound to involve performance measurement.

Dynamic Psychology of Personnel Psychology

The standard of effect is multiple, and there are different dimensions, such as psychological dimension, ecological dimension, biological dimension, economic dimension, and time dimension. As for the multiple dimensions of the effectiveness standard, the time dimension of the effectiveness standard, that is, whether the effectiveness standard is dynamic or static, has been widely debated. In the early days of the problem of effectiveness standards, most of them were simply enumerated from a static perspective. The concept of dynamic efficiency standard was proposed by Ghiselli [16]. When studying the dimension of efficiency standard, he divided it into static, dynamic and individual.

Barrett et al. Questioned the dynamic efficiency standard. They assumed that the dynamic efficiency standard has the following three definitions: (1) the average level of group performance changes over time; (2) the validity coefficient changes over time; (3) the individual is in the group The order of the levels in time changes. They considered that the first definition was not conceptually sufficient and did not consider it. They only used the paired correlation comparison method to study the relevant literature supporting the remaining two definitions, and concluded that the evidence for dynamic effects was insufficient.

Austin et al. Criticized the research of Barrett et al., Saying that it is inappropriate to use the statistical analysis method of paired correlation comparison to test the dynamic characteristics of the target. It is believed that research should be conducted using appropriate regression or methods that can reflect changes in individual performance over time.

Despite the conclusions of Barrett et al., Some recent studies support the conclusion that the efficacy standard is dynamic. Hangs, Schneider, and Niles [19] used correlation and non-linear regression methods to study the stability of teacher performance in 8 effectiveness standard dimensions, and found that although some dimensions were moderately stable, some dimensions were not stable. stable. Hulin et al. Used meta-analysis to analyze the previous 41 literatures on prediction tests, and found that the validity coefficient decreases with time, so that the individual's rank order changes with time, and the conclusion is that the efficiency standard is dynamic. .

Hoffman, Jacobs, and Gerras studied the patterns of individual baseball pitcher and hitter performance over time. They collected 10 years of performance data for baseball pitchers and batters and performed a regression analysis using the least squares method to estimate each

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The orthogonal polynomial growth curve of each subject showed that the change pattern of individual performance was basically systematic, and the subjects were classified according to the consistency of the linear trend of individual performance change, and it was found that there was a significant change in the individual performance change pattern. Between individuals.

Hoffman, Jacobs, and Baratta studied the performance of insurance salespeople for 36 months, and analyzed the collected performance data using a hierarchical linear model method that is better than the least squares estimation method. The results show that the change pattern of individual performance is systematic of. Subjects can be divided into three categories according to different changes in individual performance: the performance of individuals in the first category obviously changes linearly and gradually increases with time; the performance of individuals in the second category increases first and then gradually The form of a downward curve; the performance of the third category of individuals is similar to that of the first and second categories at the beginning, but it declines sharply in the last six or seven months. The above research shows that the change pattern of individual performance is not composed of random errors, but a system change pattern, and this system change pattern has individual differences. This proves that the standard of effectiveness is dynamic and that the study of the dynamic characteristics of the standard of effectiveness should start at the individual level. Due to the differences between individuals, research at the group level will cover up this dynamic characteristic.