PERFORMANCE ESSENTIALS VALIDATION AND TESTING

Abstract

Selection of employees has drawn on tests and other tools to determine which employees may succeed or best fit the organization’s needs. Measures of personality and situational judgement tests have often been used by organizations and are a subject of study by IO psychologists. New tools that can be tailored to organizations’ use continue to be developed and, in this study, we aimed to evaluate one such new tool, the Performance Essentials Measure (PEM), alongside the HEXACO and measures of attitudes towards lateness and absence. We used data gathered from students and faculty Middle Tennessee State University and from prospective law enforcement officers. Our exploratory factor analysis of the PEM did not match the proposed structure, with seven factors initially identified, and one discarded due to the few items and low internal consistency. While one factor, Cooperativeness, still fit with the proposed factor, many items were eliminated and some items from other factors fit better with it. Our two strongest factors, Forthcoming and Ruthless as we tentatively named them, came from our proposed Honesty PEM Factor being split in two, with the addition of some items from other proposed factors. The other factors found were composed of items from a mix of the proposed factors. While our strongest factor had strong correlations with the HEXACO, revision and updated items are needed to proceed further with the development of the PEM.