A PERSONAL HISTORY INVENTORY FOR THE SELECTION OF NEWSPAPER RETAIL ADVERTISING SALESMEN

GILES ARMAND AUCLAIR, Purdue University

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a personal history inventory on the basis of the present employee method of test validation. The sample used in this study consisted of 1,088 retail advertising salesmen from 139 cooperating newspapers belonging to the National Advertising Executives Association. The Sales Personnel Audit developed by consultants of the N.A.E.A. was administered to all sales- men in any one newspaper and each salesman was rated on a ten factor rating chart by the advertising executive who was most familiar with the salesman's job performance.The method of cross-validation was employed for the construction of the inventory and for validation purposes. For each newspaper, an effort was made to divide every rater's distribution of ratings into three parts: approximately the top fourth, middle half and bottom fourth. As a result, the sample consisted of three groups: a high criterion group (top 27%), a middle criterion group (middle 46%) and a low criterion group (bottom 27%). By random stratified sampling, two-thirds of the salesmen with each group were allocated to a primary group. The remaining third constituted the hold-out group. The stratifying variables were: 1) Age; 2) present job experience; 3) average week- day circulation size of newspaper; and 4) type of income.Considering only those items of the Sales Personnel Audit that applied to job applicants, an item analysis was conducted on the primary group consisting of the extreme top and bottom 27 per cent criterion groups only. The middle group was omitted as a precaution against the possible lack of reliability of the rating scale, an estimate of which was not possible in this study. A chi square test revealed that age was significantly related to the criterion. Raters included more middle- aged salesmen (30 to 44 years of age) in the high criterion group than in the low group. Conversely, among the young (20-29 years of age) and older (45 years old and above) salesmen, more men were rated low than were rated high.A scoring key vas empirically developed on the basis of the percentage of high and low criterion salesmen choosing each alternative. The .20 level of significance was chosen as the criterion for selecting the alternatives to be included in the scoring key. A unit positive weight was assigned to positive discriminating items, a weight of zero to all non-discriminatory alternatives, and a unit negative weight to negative discriminating alternatives.The questionnaires of the hold-out group were then scored with the empirically derived key. This hold-out group consisted of all three criterion groups. The top 27 per cent constituted the high criterion group and the others the low group. Because age was significantly related to the criterion, mean inventory scores were computed for each age group. It was found that the middle-aged salesmen group obtained a significantly higher mean score than those of the young and older salesmen groups. On the basis of these findings the instrument was validated separately for each age group. The inventory showed no validity (r bis. .01) for the young group. Significant biserial correlations of .32 and .27 vere found for the middle and older groups respectively.It is concluded that personal-data items can be assembled to form a valid instrument for the selection of newspaper retail advertising salesmen. In order to develop an effective instrument for the selection of applicants, it is recommended that an inventory be developed on the basis of the follow-up method of test validation and that an empirical scoring key be developed for each of the three age groups described in this study.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

Psychology

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