Academic Paper Writing Service http://StudyHub.vip/50969048-IOP3702-Assignment-01.Pdf 👈

1. IOP3702 5096-904-8
Student Number: 50969048
Module: IOP3702
Assignment Number: 01
Unique Assignment Number: 792265

2. IOP3702 5096-904-8
2
Index
Pg.
Introduction 3
Question 1 3-4
Question 2 4-7
Question 3 7-10
Question 4 10-15
Conclusion 15-16
Bibliography 16

3. IOP3702 5096-904-8
3
Introduction
Industrial psychology can be defined as the scientific study of people within their work
environment and it includes the application of psychological principles, theory, and
research to the work setting (Coetzee & Schreuder, 2016). The industrial psychologist
is interested in the behaviour of the individual on the workplace setting.
Question 01
As the Human resource (HR) officer you are confronted by a shop steward who
complains about the lack of fairness in the decision making process regarding
policies and practices in the organisation. Defend your viewpoint by referring to
the following:
(a) The concept of fairness
Fairness has no single meaning. Thus, each definition of fairness will be based
on different sets of values. It will also have different implications for how
personnel decisions are to be made (Coetzee & Schreuder, 2016). In this regard,
we may anticipate that management and unions will have differing views of what
entails fairness in personnel decision-making (Coetzee & Schreuder, 2016). The
shop steward may deem the decision making process regarding policies and
practices in the organisation as unfair, while I, the HR officer, will have a differing
view of what entails fairness. As the HR officer, personnel decisions are made in
the best interests of the personnel in order to ensure that employees remain
satisfied within their jobs. The methods used to make decisions will be without
bias to ensure employees are not discriminated against or negatively affected in
any way by changes in policies and practices. The HR officer has an ethical and
moral obligation to ensure fair and equal treatment for all employees in the work
environment.
(b) The principles of procedural fairness
The principles of procedural fairness consist of the following (Coetzee &
Schreuder, 2016):
• Objectivity

4. IOP3702 5096-904-8
4
• Consistency in the treatment of all applicants
• Freedom of the selection procedures from any form of manipulation,
including adherence to deadlines of applications, and so forth
• Selection process must be developed and conducted by professionals
• Confidentiality of data to be maintained
• Final decisions to be based on a review of the candidate’s data, and the
decision made by more than one individual
• Protection of the candidate’s right to privacy
• Personal information may be sought only in so far as it pertains to the
characteristics of the job, and
• Selection procedures in which faking may take place should be
considered unfair, as results can be manipulated to meet the criteria
• Information must be quantifiable, thereby ensuing objectivity and allowing
for comparisons between individuals on the basis of ‘scores’ achieved
• All information used must be directly related and unquestionably relevant
to the decision being made
The above mentioned principles require the HR officer to make use of a fair
and proper procedure in order to make decisions on personnel. If the HR
officer follows all these principles, she is more likely to come to a fair and
correct decision. HR officers have an ethical and moral obligation to ensure
fair and equal treatment of people. This is entrenched in the Code of
Professional Conduct of the HPCSA. Thus, the employee does not have to be
concerned that the decision making process regarding organisational policies
and practices are unfair.
Question 2
You are the Industrial and Organisational (IO) psychologist and have been asked
to develop a new selection strategy for psychometric assessment in your
organisation. Discuss the various professional and ethical aspects that need to

5. IOP3702 5096-904-8
5
be considered to ensure fair assessments. Refer to test classification, the training
and registration categories of assessors and the ethical standards.
The decisions that are made based on psychological test results may alter people’s
lives to the extent that assessment and assessment results may cause emotional or
psychological trauma to those being assessed. Responsible test use is non-negotiable.
Responsible test use is defined and directed by written guidelines and codes of
conduct. These are published by professional bodies, such as the HPCSA in South
Africa. Based on the International Test Commission’s ‘International guidelines on test
use’ fair assessment practices revolve around the following aspects (Coetzee &
Schreuder, 2016):
• Assessment measures and assessment results should be applied and used in a
fair, professional and ethical manner.
• The needs and rights of the people being assessed should be regarded with the
utmost concern.
• The predictor used should closely match the purpose for which the assessment
results will be used.
• Moderation factors that result from the social, political, and cultural context of the
assessment should be taken into account.
Fair and ethical assessment practice requires regulation of the type of tests used, as
well as the competence of the test administrator. It also requires ethical standards in
terms of the rights of those being assessed (Coetzee & Schreuder, 2016).
Classification of tests:
The APA proposed guidelines for the classification of tests to prevent psychological
measures falling into the hands of unqualified people. Test classification ensures
that tests are accessible only to appropriately qualified persons. Test distributors can
ensure that their tests are only sold to qualified persons. Currently, in South Africa
the test classification system distinguishes only between two categories in the
“Policy on the classification of psychometric measuring devices, instruments,
methods, and techniques”. The first category refers to ‘psychological tests’ and

6. IOP3702 5096-904-8
6
include tests that measure psychological constructs that are used in the process of
performing a psychological act. These tests normally fall under the control of a
registered psychologist and can only be used within certain parameters by
pscyhometrists. The second category refers to tests that are used by other
professionals. Tests in this category include tests used by speech, language, and
hearing professions, by occupational therapists and medical orthotics/prosthetics
(Coetzee & Schreuder, 2016).
Training and registration of test professionals:
The Professional Board for Psychology (in South Africa) distinguishes between a
psychologist and a psychometrist. There are different classification categories for
psychologists, e.g. industrial, counselling, clinical, research, and educational
psychology. In order to register as an industrial psychologist, you have to obtain a
Master’s degree with at least a 12 months’ practicum in various industrial-
psychological or human-resources activities. Registered industrial psychologists may
use all levels of tests if they have had the required training. They may also control all
testing activities carried out by psychometrists. In order to register as a
psychometrist (Coetzee & Schreuder, 2016):
• One should complete an accredited 4 year BPsych/BPsych equivalent degree
which should include modules in psychometrics, psychological assessment
and test construction.
• As part of accredited 4-year degree, one should also complete an approved
practicum in a minimum of six months (full-time), under the guidance and
supervision of a senior psychologist within a maximum of 12 months (part-
time).
• Obtain at least 70% in the examination of the Professional Board for
Psychology.
Codes of conduct: Standards for conducting assessment practices:
Codes of conduct for assessment practices are mainly based on ethical principles
protecting the rights and needs of the persons being assessed. Important ethical

7. IOP3702 5096-904-8
7
principles include the right to privacy, confidentiality, and informed consent (Coetze &
Schreuder, 2016).
• Any report on assessment results should contain only the information that is
relevant to the purpose of the assessment. This is to protect the test taker’s right
to privacy. It is imperative to determine and communicate the purpose of the
assessment prior to communicating the results. When results are communicated
it should be done in a manner that is aligned with the purpose of the assessment.
• The primary responsibility of the assessor is to protect the confidentiality of the
information that has been obtained during the assessment. The test taker has to
give ‘unambiguous consent, usually in written form’ for their personal information
to be released to a third party. The test taker has to understand the purpose of
the assessment and what the results will be used for in order to give written
consent. Before consenting to an assessment, the test taker should be well-
informed about every aspect of the assessment.
• Assessors should take responsibility for the ethical use of tests through ensuring
that they have the necessary training and competence.
• Assessors should act in an ethical and professional manner before, during and
after test administration.
• Test material should be securely stored, e.g. on an encrypted computer and
assessment results should be kept confidential.
Question 3
The manager of a large clothing store would like to start an “employee of the
month” program. In order to do this, she needs to:
(a) Define and distinguish between conceptual- and actual criteria. Give an
example of a conceptual criteria and an example of an actual criteria.
Conceptual criteria refers to the ideas of theoretical constructs that cannot be
measured. For example, take the selection of an employee who is “employee of
the month”. Conceptual criteria would be when we think of the most successful

8. IOP3702 5096-904-8
8
employee in the organisation for that month, i.e. the one who contributed most to
the profitability of the organisation for the month (Coetzee & Schreuder, 2016).
Actual criteria serves as real measures of the conceptual criteria. For example,
profitability of work is an objective measure of a valued organisational outcome.
Profitability of work would be the conceptual criterion. Thus the Industrial
psychologist would need to find a way to turn this criterion into an operationally
measurable factor. In order to obtain an actual measure of profitability, there
must be a standard against which to compare the employee’s work (Coetzee &
Schreuder, 2016).
(b) The actual/observed criteria selected are never equivalent to the
conceptual criteria we have in mind. There will always be a certain amount
of distortion (deficiency and contamination). Explain the meaning of
criterion deficiency, relevance and contamination.
Criteria relevance – Criteria is relevant if it is logically related to the performance
domain it is measuring. Criterion relevance refers to the degree to which the
actual/observed criteria and conceptual criteria coincide. Relevant criteria can
represent organisational, team, and individual outcomes. Such outcomes can be
work-related behaviours, outputs, attitudes, or performance in training, as
indicated by a review of information about the job. The criteria can be measures
of overall or task-specific work performance, work behaviours, or work outcomes.
For example, criteria such as behavioural and performance ratings or rate of
advancement. Industrial psychologists must ensure that the measures used as
criteria are relevant to the job (Coetzee & Schreuder, 2016).
Criterion deficiency and contamination reduce the usefulness and relevance of
criteria.
Criterion deficiency is the degree to which the actual criterion fails to overlap with
the conceptual criterion. Criterion deficiency occurs when an actual criterion is
missing information that is part of the behaviour one is trying to measure, i.e. the
criterion falls short of measuring job performance or behaviour perfectly. For

9. IOP3702 5096-904-8
9
example, if an industrial psychologist considers the performance of a doctor to be
defined exclusively by the number of patients saved from death, ignoring many
other important aspects of the doctors’ job, then that statistic would be
considered a deficient criterion (Coetzee & Schreuder, 2016).
Criterion contamination is the part of the actual/observed criteria that is unrelated
to the conceptual criteria. Criterion contamination occurs when an actual or
operational criterion includes information unrelated to the behaviour one is trying
to measure. Criteria contamination can result from extraneous factors that
contribute to a worker’s apparent success of failure in a job. For example, a car
salesman may receive a poor performance appraisal because of low car sales
levels, even though the poor sales actually result from the fact that the car
salesman supervises a group of young, inexperienced sales people. Gathering
criteria measures with no checks on their relevance or worth before use often
leads to contamination (Coetzee & Schreuder, 2016).
(c) Illustrate the above by means of a diagram and provide relevant examples
to clarify your answer.
Criterion relevance
Criterion deficiency Criterion contamination
Criterion distortion
Conceptual
criterion
Observed/Actual
criterion

10. IOP3702 5096-904-8
10
The manager would like to start an “employee of the month” program in an appliance store. For
example, if the profitability of an individual employee is affected by the type of technology (low-
end technology) of the appliances being sold, then the profitability (the criterion) is considered
contaminated.
Question 4
Industrial psychologists are constantly faced with a host of practical problems.
Understanding the research process helps them to solve these practical
problems, apply the results of studies reported by others and assess the
accuracy of claims made about new practices and equipment. Explain the five-
step empirical research process in details, distinguishing between qualitative and
quantitative research methods.
Step 1: Formulating the research question
The formulation of the research question is the starting point of the research
process. The research question should be stated clearly and unambiguously.
Each question requires a very specific answer, as well as the variables that you
want to investigate. We distinguish between five different types of questions,
namely (Coetzee & Schreuder, 2016):
• Exploratory questions are often asked when a relatively new area is investigated.
It is also asked when the nature and extent of a complex problem is not well
known and one wishes to do an initial study. It addresses “what” questions, e.g.
“What are the kinds of impression management techniques that candidates use
in a selection interview?”
• Descriptive questions paint a detailed picture of the relationship between two
constructs or the differences between groups. Researchers may describe levels
of productivity or numbers of employees who left during the year. For example,
“Is there a relationship between the type of interview conducted and the
interviewer’s success of rating an applicant’s personality characteristics?”
• Predictive questions are used to try and predict an outcome based on another
construct or intervention, e.g. to determine which employees will be productive,

11. IOP3702 5096-904-8
11
or which ones will be dissatisfied. This information is utilised in order to select
applicants who will be better employees. Predictive questions should contain the
word “predict”, e.g. “Can the results of a selection interview be used to
successfully predict the performance of an applicant?”
• Evaluative questions pertain to evaluate something or someone, e.g. whether a
training programme is effective in producing better performance in employees,
e.g. “How effective is the current interviewer training programme used in the
organisation?”
• Causal or explanatory questions ask why events occur as they do, e.g. why
employees leave. For example, “Does feedback after a negative selection
decision reduce the negative effect thereof on job applicants?”
Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research
We distinguish between three different types of research, namely quantitative,
qualitative, and mixed methods research (Coetzee & Schreuder, 2016):
• Quantitative research aims to describe or explain a variable or situation. This
type of research collects information in the form of numbers and uses statistical
analysis to answer the research question, e.g. “Is there a relationship between
gender and interviewer success rates?”
• Qualitative research aims to provide in-depth information and a deeper
understanding of, e.g. behaviour at work. This type of research explores feelings,
experiences, meanings, and understanding of specific variables, e.g. “How do
applicants experience an unstructured selection interview?”
• Mixed methods research is a combination of quantitative and qualitative
research.
Step 2: Choosing an appropriate design for the study
After formulating the research question, the researcher has to decide what type of study
would be best to answer the research question. Research designs can be distinguished
from each other in terms of two aspects, namely the naturalness of the research setting,
and the degree of control the researcher has (Coetzee & Schreuder, 2016):

12. IOP3702 5096-904-8
12
• The naturalness of the research setting refers to the environment in which the
study is conducted. It is desirable to conduct a research study in the natural
environment, because the researcher would like to investigate the variable
exactly as it occurs in the natural setting, e.g. conducting a study in the natural
office setting.
• The degree of control that the researcher has over variables that do not form part
of the research study, is the second important aspect in a research design.
These other variables may influence the results of the study. In an environment
where all the aspects that influence the study can be controlled, there is a high
degree of control. However, this will likely occur in an unnatural environment like
a laboratory. Thus, there will always be a trade-off between the naturalness of
the environment and the degree of control that the researcher has.
Types of designs – within quantitative research there are three types of research,
namely (Coetzee & Schreuder, 2016):
• Non-experimental research is a descriptive type of research where the goal is to
attempt to provide an accurate description of a particular variable. Descriptive
and predictive questions can be answered by non-experimental research.
• Experimental research tries to determine cause-and-effect relationships. This
type of research is the only type of research that can determine the degree to
which one variable causes another variable. The causality or explanatory type of
question would be answered by choosing an experimental design.
• Quasi-experimental research, also referred to as field studies, occurs when
experimental procedures are applied, but not all other influencing variables are
controlled in the study. This is the best type of study if one wants to investigate
causality in the natural environment of the organisation.
Within qualitative research there are five types of designs, namely (Coetzee &
Schreuder, 2016):

13. IOP3702 5096-904-8
13
• Case study – It aims to provide an in-depth description of an object, program,
event, activity, or process to be studied. It can be used to answer “how” and
“why” questions.
• Ethnography – The art and science of describing a group or culture. It studies the
shared pattern of behaviour, language and actions of a specific group over a
prolonged period of time in their natural setting.
• Grounded theory – The researcher attempts to construct a new theory that in
grounded in the views of the participants. It involves multiple stages of data
collection and looking for connections between categories of information.
• Phenomenological research – The researcher tries to understand the lived
experiences of participants, e.g. investigating the experience of employees of the
implementation of flexitime.
• Narrative research – The researcher studies the life of an individual and asks one
or more individuals to provide stories about their lives.
Step 3: Collecting the data
There are three main activities that should take place during this stage (Coetzee
& Schreuder, 2016):
• The people, or the sample from which the data will be collected should be
identified
o A relevant sample should be identified and drawn. In quantitative
research, the researcher will draw only a sample from the whole group
that is to be investigated. Random sampling is the most common
method of drawing a sample. This means that each member of the
group has an equal chance of being included in the sample. In
qualitative research the aim is to gain a deeper understanding of a
certain variable. Therefore, smaller samples are used.
• The instruments or tools that will be used should be identified or developed and
the instruments of tools should be administered to the sample

14. IOP3702 5096-904-8
14
o Surveys (questionnaires) – A set of questions that requires an individual
to express an opinion or answer. Can be used in both quantitative and
qualitative research.
o Observation – The researcher observes employees in their
organisational setting. In quantitative research a pre-developed
checklist can be used. In qualitative research, the researcher can take
field notes.
o Interviews – One-on-one sessions between the interviewer and the
interviewee. Interviews are most often used in qualitative research.
o Focus groups – Pre-selected groups of people have a facilitated
discussion with the purpose of answering specific research questions.
This is used in qualitative research.
o Archival data – Material that is readily available, where the data has
already been captured in one form or another. In quantitative research
this could consist of numerical information. In qualitative research this
could consist of textual information.
Step 4: Analysing the data
The research question and type of study will determine the kind of analysis techniques
that one will choose. In qualitative data, the data analysis needs to be tailored for the
specific type of qualitative research design. The generic steps include the following
(Coetzee & Schreuder, 2016):
• Organise and prepare the data – arrange them into different types of information
• Obtain a general sense of the data – read through all the data and reflect on their
overall meaning
• Do a detailed analysis by coding the data – organise the data into meaningful
categories and label each category.
• Generate a description of the setting or people as well as categories and identify
a small number of themes. These can be interconnected to form a storyline,
developed into a theoretical model or shaped into a general description.

15. IOP3702 5096-904-8
15
• Convey the findings of the analysis. Usually by narrative passage, but also
including figures, visuals, tables, and process models.
• Interpret the meaning of the data. Summarise the lesion learnt by comparing it
with literature or extant theories or suggest new questions that need to be asked.
In quantitative research, statistical analysis is normally used. Statistics are
divided into two components, descriptive and inferential statistics (Coetzee &
Schreuder, 2016).
• Descriptive statistics are used to summarise data in such a manner that it
allows to describe the data in a meaningful manner. The data can be
described in two basic ways: central tendency and variability.
• Inferential statistics enable us to draw conclusions that generalise from the
subjects we have studied to all the people of interest by allowing us to make
inferences based on probabilities.
Step 5: Drawing conclusions from research
After the data has been analysed, the researcher draws conclusions. As a rule,
we prefer to know the results from several studies. It would be advisable not to
implement any major changes based on the results of a single study. A
researcher should keep up to date with the latest development in their area of
expertise. This is done to avoid repeating someone else’s research study. It Is
important to note that the conclusions drawn from research can affect many
aspects of our lives (Coetzee & Schreuder, 2016).
Conclusion
As we have seen above, industrial psychologists and HR practitioners are responsible
and involved in a wide array of decisions and practices within the workplace. They are
also obligated to keep to certain rules and regulations in order to avoid bias and
discrimination when making decisions in the workplace. Research is also a very
important aspect to an industrial psychologist as this will aid them in discovering new
practices that would be efficient to use in the workplace. They are also encouraged to

16. IOP3702 5096-904-8
16
stay up to date with other researcher’s studies in order to learn about new theories and
practices within organisations.
Bibliography
Coetzee, M., & Schreuder, D. (2016). Personnel Psychology: An applied perspective.
Oxford University Press: Southern Africa