Employment-Related Drug Testing: Idiosyncratic Characteristics and Issues

Abstract

In the field of personnel and human resource management, many discussions of drug testing have taken a perspective which treats drug testing as analogous to the use of other common personnel selection devices, such as employment tests. This paper identifies and examines certain idiosyncratic issues and characteristics of drug testing compared to other selection devices. These unique features differentiate drug tests and testing, and their use from other types of pre-hire predictors of job performance. The implications of these idiosyncrasies for both human resource management professionals and public personnel management practitioners are highlighted and discussed.