Construction Employee Relations and Benefits
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Researching employee selection tools

Nick Roy, MBA, MAHRM

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL October 23,2005 – As a small business owner, you know that the failure rate of small businesses is extremely high. You also know that your small business success depends on the people you hire into your organization. Determining the qualifications of job candidates requires that as much information as possible be obtained from the candidates and other sources. Such information needs to be relevant to the job as well as reliable.

That is why it is important to become familiar with the various journals that report findings from experimental studies that are made on the various HR functions. For example, there is a wide variety of research data available on the effectiveness of various tools that are used to obtain information about job candidates.

Two popular journals that you would want to become familiar with are the Journal of Applied Psychology and Personnel Psychology. Also, given the usefulness of the Internet as a research library, you may be able to find quality research studies by self-published authors.

No matter where you find your research studies to review, you will want to critically evaluate these research studies. Here is a list of criteria that I use in my research.

Critical evaluation of research

This list is designed as a guide to help you evaluate research articles that you will read as part of your research for your projects, etc. These are not all of the areas that you should consider when evaluating the research; combine this with your intuition, what you have learned in class, and what you have learned through your experience in dealing with reports.

1. Is the problem clearly stated?

2. Does the problem have a theoretical rationale?

3. How significant is the problem?

4. Is there a review of the literature? If so, is it relevant?

5. How clearly are the hypotheses stated?

6. Are operational definitions provided?

7. Is the procedure (or method) used to attack and answer the problem fully and completely described? Was a sample used? If so, how was it selected?

8. Are there any probable sources of error that might influence the results of the study? If so, have they been controlled?

9. Were statistical techniques used to analyze the data? If so, were they appropriate?

10. How clearly are the results presented?

11. Are the conclusions presented clearly? Do the data support the conclusions? Does the researcher over generalize his or her findings?

12. What are the limitations of the study? Are they stated?

About the author

Nick Roy is an HR Researcher, Consultant, and freelance business writer. His website, www.nickroy.com, currently serves 20,000 visitors every month in an effort to be a quality resource for human resources management in their companies. He currently holds a Master of Business Administration and Master of Arts in Human Resources Management from Hawaii Pacific University, and a Bachelor of Science in Hospitality Management from Florida Metropolitan University, Fort Lauderdale. He is also currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Organizational Change from Hawaii Pacific University, with theses research on “The Impact of Technology on Human Resources and Organization Effectiveness.”

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