Legal Concerns in the Use of Weighted Applications¹

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The use of the standard weighted application procedure relies on strictly empirically derived keys for validity. While weighted applications are generally valid in terms of the correlation between score on the application and position on the criterion, the empirical scheme may weight items that can not be shown to be relevant to the job for which they predict. To the extent that employment decisions are based on non‐job‐relevant weighted applications, such decisions may be contrary to the letter or the spirit of the Civil Rights Act. Alternative methods incorporating job relevance into the weighting procedure via job analysis inject the “hand of reason” into the process. Such rational‐empirical approaches ensure job‐relatedness as well as validity.