Exploring The Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures

Many readers are familiar with the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP), which describe the standards by which EEO regulatory agencies evaluate adverse impact analyses and validation evidence in impact cases. Although these guidelines are arguably outdated and inconsistent in some ways with contemporary scientific best practices related to employee selection, they persist as the enforcement standard. Despite their general familiarity with UGESP, government contractors are often unaware of the EEO risk associated with employment decisions as they relate to specifications outlined in UGESP. In a series of upcoming blog posts, DCI staff will dissect sections and requirements of UGESP to highlight some of the thorniest EEO risk factors related to employee selection. Our hope is to provide clarification around questions such as:

• What is an employment decision and what selection tools are challengeable?
• What validation strategies are available?
• How can you determine whether a validation study is done well?
• When is a job analysis required as part of effective validation evidence?
• How much validity evidence is “enough”?
• For what selection procedures are content validation strategies appropriate?
• What is construct validation evidence?
• When are transportability strategies appropriate?
• How should cut scores be set?
• What aspects of the guidelines are inconsistent with other guidance documents such as the APA Standards or SIOP Principles?

by Kayo Sady, Ph.D., Consultant and Eric Dunleavy, Ph.D., Principal Consultant, DCI Consulting Group