Longitudinal Assessment of Applicant Reactions to Employment Testing and Test Outcome Feedback

Talya N. Bauer Portland State University Michael R. Dolen L. A. Unified School District Carl P. Maertz, Jr. Mississippi State University Michael A. Campion Purdue University Following a justice framework, the present study examined actual candidates taking selection tests to gain full-time employment. The reactions of 144 applicants for an entry- level accounting job were examined in a real employment testing context at 3 time periods: before testing, after testing but before feedback on whether they passed or failed the test, and after test performance feedback. With controls for pretest perceptions, several of the 5 procedural justice measures (information known about the test, chance to perform, treatment at the test site, consistency of the test administration, and job relatedness) predicted applicant evaluations regarding the organization, perceptions of employment testing, and applicant test-taking self-efficacy. Test outcome favorability (passing or fail- ing the employment test) predicted outcomes beyond initial reactions more consistently than procedural justice perceptions. Procedural justice perceptions explained incremental variance in some analyses after the influence of outcome favorability was controlled. The selection process is a two-way interaction where applicants and organizations gather information about one another and react to this information while making em- ployment decisions. Written employment tests are fre- quently used to make such decisions. It is estimated that 15-20% of all organizations use written ability tests to help them select applicants (Rowe, Williams, & Day, 1994). Unfortunately, as Schmit and Ryan (1997) pointed out, more than a third of Americans seem to have unfavor- able attitudes toward pre-employment testing. This may be because applicants do not believe that paper-and-pencil ability tests capture a person's true ability to do the job Talya N. Bauer, School of Business Administration, Portland State University; Carl P. Maertz, Jr., School of Business, Missis- sippi State University; Michael R. Dolen, Personnel Division, L. A. Unified School District; and Michael A. Campion, Kran- nert School of Management, Purdue University; Michael R. Do- len is now at United Airlines, Chicago, Illinois. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 12th annual conference of the Society for Industrial and Organiza- tional Psychology, St. Louis, Missouri, April 1997. We thank Ann Young for her help with data collection. We also thank Stephen Gilliland and Donald TruxiUo for their invaluable com- ments on drafts of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Talya N. Bauer, Portland State University, School of Business Administration, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon 97207. Elec- tronic mall may be sent to TalyaB@sba.pdx.edu. well (Linn, 1982) or because they are otherwise perceived as unfair. This can be a serious concern in industries where fierce competition exists for qualified applicants. Also, with employment lawsuits so prevalent (Bennett-Alexan- der & Pincus, 1998), perceived testing fairness has the potential to affect an organization's bottom line dramati- cally. As a result, recent research has begun to help organi- zations understand the effects of applicant reactions to selection procedures. For example, some selection procedures are more popu- lar than others. Applicants tend to favor procedures that are seen as job related (e.g., Kluger & Rothstein, 1993; Ployhart & Ryan, 1998; Rynes, 1993; Rynes & Connerley, 1993; Smither, Reilly, Millsap, Pearlman, & Stoffey, 1993; Steiner & Gilliland, 1996), and applicant reactions can have an impact on organizational outcomes such as satis- faction with aspects of the selection process, the job, and the organization, job acceptance intentions, and/or turn- over intentions (e.g., Bauer, Truxillo, Craig, Sanchez, Fer- rara, & Campion, 1998; Cropanzano & Konovsky, 1995; Macan, Avedon, Paese, & Smith, 1994). It is still unclear, however, if applicant reactions influence important out- comes after controlling for initial attitudes toward the hiring organization (Rynes, 1993; Rynes & Connerley, 1993). The present study extends this line of research by (a) addressing several methodological issues, such as a lack of baseline attitudes toward the organization; (1~) testing previously theorized but unexplored hypotheses; 892

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