Validation of the Prospect Screener for the selection of entry-level service industry employees in the South African context

Abstract

Organisations can save money and make better hiring decisions by using short psychometric tests as the first screening step, since such tests effectively screen out the least suitable candidates, leaving a smaller pool to partake in the costlier aspects of the process. The Prospect Screener is a South African screening tool that addresses this need by providing a preliminary screening of basic verbal ability, numerical ability, detail-orientation, and some aspects of personality. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Prospect Screener in selecting entry-level service industry employees in South Africa by investigating its psychometric properties. A sample of 371 South African entry-level employees working in the service industry was assessed using the Prospect Screener, the Basic Traits Inventory, the Verbatim, and the Numeratum. In the reliability analysis, all of these assessments demonstrated satisfactory to good internal consistency, with the exception of two scales on the Prospect Screener. With regard to the Prospect Screener, in the convergent validity analysis, construct validity was demonstrated in that its scales correlated statistically significantly with other scales that measure the same construct. In the differential validity analysis, it was found that the Prospect Screener overall score effectively distinguishes between high and low performance on the other four tests on a statistical level. Post-hoc analyses revealed that the greatest differences were between the Good Prospect group and the other two groups. There was no statistically significant difference between the scores of the Screened Out group and the Prospect group, which poses a potential area of improvement for the Prospect Screener. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the current theoretical model that is used in the Prospect Screener and showed that the model presented satisfactory fit, offering evidence for its structural validity. The regression analysis delivered results that were in line with the research hypotheses, with the Words scale predicting scores on the Verbatim, the Numbers scale predicting scores on the Numeratum, and the Emotional Stability and Dependability scales predicting scores on the Neuroticism and Conscientiousness scales, respectively. Overall, the present study supports the validity and reliability of the Prospect Screener and, therefore, confirms its effectiveness for use in job selection in the South African service industry.