Adverse Impact in Personnel Selection: The Legal Framework and Test Bias

Abstract

By the early 1990s, public concern in Europe over discrimination against women and minority groups had grown manifestly. This confronted psychologists with the problem of the disproportionate representation of various subgroups in certain kinds of jobs. In this article we first deal with the major upheaval in the legal issues that presently shape the selection practices in Europe and the United States. We then turn our attention to the problem of indirect discrimination and the discussion on the validity of some of the most representative assessment devices used in selection. Although there has not been a systematic application of work-sample tests in Europe over the past decades, some organizations have turned to the behavioral-consistency model in an attempt to avoid the problems of job-relatedness and adverse impact of the traditional assessment procedures.