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Retesting Policies
On December 9, 2008 by Jamie Madigan
I've been thinking a bit about retesting policies lately. You know, if someone takes your employment test, do you let them take it again? When? How many times? Do you poke them with a stick first?
Based on what I've seen and heard from talking to other colleagues, the only thing that people seem to agree on is that they're needed. After that, recommendations get either vague or militantly specific. There do seem to be a few things that most of the experts agree you need to keep in mind.
First, how long do you make people wait before retesting? I call this "the cooldown timer" but that's just the World of Warcraft geek in me. The main concerns here are drains on company resources (in terms of how expensive it is to give a test) and a practice effect for test-takers. If your test is a hands-on work sample that takes 6 hours to complete and can only be administered one-on-one, then you may want to keep people from retesting as often as you might if you're talking about a 40-minute, paper-based test that can be given to dozens of people at a time.
The practice effect is a thornier problem. If a person is allowed to take the same test over and over again her score may have too much to do with practice and not enough to do with the validity of the test. Problem. This may be especially true of timed tests, or with things like tests of reading comprehension where the test taker would benefit from repeated exposure to the material. The nature of the test will have to inform your decision, but generally you can combat this by either having alternate forms of your test (expensive!) and/or having them wait a month or more between attempts so that they have a chance to forget (cheap!).
On the other hand, sometimes practice isn't a bad thing. Some skills (say, data entry or physical abilities) may be expected to change with practice, and if they improve that's a GOOD thing and you may not want to discourage people. Again, the nature of the test and what constructs it measures should inform your decision.
On the third hand, there are arguably some constructs that are highly unlikely to change over time. Personality is stable by definition. General mental ability doesn't change much in adults. In these cases allowing retesting may have more to do with controlling perceptions of fairness than with validity.
The second thing you want to address is which test results are a person's "official" ones. If you just work with a pass/fail result where a person has to pass a certain cut score in order to be put in an applicant pool, this is easy. Once a person passes the test, no retesting is needed or allowed. But if you use top-down selection or banding, things get trickier. Candidates may want to retest to move to the top of the pile and better their chances of getting the job. This is going to be particularly true if you always let their highest score be their official one.
My suggestion? Always make the most recent score the one that's used for any selection decision. People may try to improve their score through retesting, but if they backslide it's just part of the risk inherent to the process. Life is like a game of Chutes and Ladders that way.
Finally, you need to consider how long test results are good for. In other words, do they curdle like milk and expire if given long enough? Again, this is something where the nature of the test is going to have to be your guide. In general, aptitude, personality, and general mental ability tests aren't going to change, but tests of physical strength, skill, or even job knowledge are susceptible to the ravages of time and may call for quicker expiration dates.
Existing comments:
Posted by David Morris at December 12, 2008 12:19 PM:
Regarding how long tests are good for, I've always just picked a reasonable time, say 1 or 2 years. Sometimes longer if the results are used for internal selection. The other thing to keep in mind is how long do you keep the data records? I know some places including test vendors that keep it forever. I still believe the best practice is to conduct continual validation (e.g., match test scores to your criteria), recode it after the expiration data. This way you've got good data for your validation study and you minimize any unnecessary litigation risks.
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