Reliability and Validity

The latest version of Smart Hiring uses sample data captured from various methods. The first one is wherein company received data for more then 5000 personnel tested using Smart Hiring all over India in various companies.

Smart Hiring was also administered to 454 prospective MBA students from 12 Management Institutions located in Northern, Eastern, Western and Southern regions of the country. The sample includes both male and female students of 21-26 years age from the prestigious business education institutions.

It was a purposive sampling. Efforts were made to include B-Schools representative of the HR population, by keeping proportion of each sex, geographical distribution, socio-economic status and age distribution equitable. Read more by downloading the Test Manual from the link in the left column.

RELIABILITY

Reliability refers to the extent to which a test is internally consistent i.e how accurately is the test measuring what it is designed to measure?

The reliability or internal consistency of the scale was calculated by Split-half method. The scale was divided into two parts using odd-even method. The correlation co-efficient thus calculated were corrected by Spearman Brown formula for each dimension and for the whole test. For a detailed correlation co-efficient please download Smart Hiring Test Manual.

Smart Hiring has high reliability co-efficient for each of the personality dimension and statistically highly significant. The high reliability coefficient for the total score shows that total score is a more dependable index of personality dimensions than is any score for each of personality dimensions. 

VALIDITY

Validity refers to the degree to which a test measures what it purports to measure.

The Online Version of Smart Hiring has 150 items that cover 15 normal personality dimensions. All the test items have been pruned and refined by a team of highly qualified and experienced psychologists. Based on consensual approach regarding manifestation constituting evidence of a specified trait, the items were selected and placed under each of the respective personality dimensions. For each dimension, finally, there are 10 questions.

The data collected on 454 candidates from various B-schools was also used to validate the items by evaluating the relevance of test items individually and Test as a whole; the purpose being to learn whether answers to the individual items are, on the whole, reasonably consistent with the behavior or personality trends suggested by the scores. This is a form of content validity. See detailed Validity Co-efficient by downloading Smart Hiring Test Manual.

Validity of Smart Hiring was also checked by administering a standardized Inventory with 36 items taken from published tests. Scores on inventory as a criterion were correlated with scores on Smart Hiring for 454 subjects. The correlation co-efficient between the criterion and Smart Hiring is 616 which is highly significant at 1% level. Thus Smart Hiring has high concurrent validity.

The above finding shows that validity of the new version of Smart Hiring is quite high. It may be mentioned that validity and cross validation of psychological instrument like Smart Hiring is a continuous process at Smart Hiring. With increased data and feedback coming from valued users, its predictive value is likely get enhanced. .