A Study Of The In-basket Test Based On A Competency Model

I-basket test is one of the key tools of the assessment center. Its reliability and validity are affected by various factors, such as testing environment, work experience, grading standard and rating process. In-basket test has received a lot of interest and it has been extensively studied abroad. As a result of all, most of these studies have proved that the in-basket test had high reliability and moderate criterion-related validity. But there are great discrepancy regarding its construct validity. The study of in-basket test started late and still at its first step in China.Based on the previous study, we investigated the reliability of in-basket test using competency model applied to college graduates. The results showed that:(1) The questionnaire of college graduates'competency is applied and surveyed 280 administrators and employees in Guangzhou enterprises and constructed a model of college graduates'competency. Through exploratory and verified factor analysis, the research proposes that the model of college graduates'competency is composed of 5 factors, among which are communication and team work, operation and exploration, post management, task management and self management.(2) Develop the in-basket test based on the model of college graduates'competency. The test was applied to the college graduates in Guangzhou and evaluated from 4 dimensions: organizing and planning competency, communication and coordination competency, analyzing and solving issues competency, perspective of overall situation competency. The Result showed that the reliability of in-basket test was .912, and the distinguishing was good. The correlation between the each two dimension scores was from .563 to .856, which can be discriminated; While the correlation between the dimension scores and the total scores was from .795 to .955, which indicated that the single dimension score contributed significantly to the total score and that there barely were multi-collinearity between them. It proved that the in-basket test had desirable construct validity; the criterion-related validity between the in-basket test scores and the school achievement and Administrative Aptitude Test scores is desirable.(3) The study of the training effects to the in-basket test manifested that both the object training and the rater training would improve the in-basket test scores. Training object can help them better show their practical competency, and training raters will improve the inter-rater agreement and the inter-rater reliability of the in-basket test.College graduates are the most important pool of human resource for the Society. The study of the in-basket test applied to college graduates is not only a research of the in-basket test's reliability and validity, but also important for the selection and the talent succession of the college graduates.