Fairness in Testing: Fair Testing of People with Disabilities
What the Law Demands
The Disability Discrimination Act (1995) makes it illegal for employers to treat people with disabilities less favourably than others and applies not only to recruitment and selection but also to training, promotion and redundancy. Under the provisions of the act, any assessment technique used in selection must, as far as is reasonably possible, be free of any requirement that places a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage, unless that requirement can be justified. In terms of justifying a requirement, this act goes further than acts related to sexual and racial discrimination. It is not enough simply to prove that the requirement is essential for the job; the employer must also have considered whether the disabled person could meet the job-related criterion if a ‘reasonable adjustment' were made either to the selection process or to the job itself.
Adjustments to the Testing Process
Where testing is concerned, people with disabilities may experience some aspects of the testing situation in a different way from the sample on which the test was standardised. These differences in how the testing situation is experienced can be very subtle. For example a sufferer of chronic pain or a wheelchair user may find it uncomfortable to maintain a writing posture for the timed period of the test. Such physical discomfort may detract from concentration and cause under-performance.
All stages of the testing process give rise to issues that require consideration when the test-taker has a disability. Below, we consider each of these stages in turn.
Establishing job requirements
The law requires that employers remain open to the possibility that reasonable adjustments to working conditions may allow a person with a disability to carry out the job. For this reason, the analysis of role requirements needs to be reviewed in the case of people with disabilities. Given that there are numerous degrees and types of disabilities, it follows that it is not possible to produce a definitive list of reasonable adjustments that might be made to working conditions. The best person to consult is the individual with the disability. This is why it is important, in the initial letter you send out, to ask candidates to let you know if they may have special requirements.
Choosing the right assessment method
There are aspects of some assessment techniques that are intrinsically disadvantageous in the case of certain types of disability, whatever additional facilities are provided. These are considered below:
Abstract and Spatial tests are likely to be disadvantageous to people with visual impairments.
Verbal reasoning tests may be unfair to people who have severe hearing impairments particularly where the impairment preceded the acquisition of language and for those who communicate using sign language rather than spoken English. In addition, where people with disabilities have had unequal access to educational opportunities, some verbal and numerical reasoning tests may, in their content, exceed the attainment level that has been achieved. It is always ethically unacceptable to put a person through a test which is presented as a measure of their ability to reason when in fact it cannot actually measure their ability to reason because successful completion requires a higher level of knowledge than they have had the opportunity to attain.
Aptitude tests that measure skills relevant to the workplace will generally not take account of the ways in which people with disabilities might make reasonable adjustments to the working environment or working methods.
Practical exercises such as in-tray exercises, are likely to be fairer than written tests to people with disabilities because such exercises give scope for them to bring their own particular ways of working to the task. However this will only be the case where the practical exercise has been designed to measure existing skills. Practical tests that are designed to measure potential to learn new skills, (referred to as ‘Trainability Tests') will usually have been standardised on people without disabilities; the possession of a disability will alter the manner in which a person goes about acquiring a skill.
Personality questionnaires should not in themselves be disadvantageous to people with disabilities. An exception to this is the use of scales measuring aspects of stress management where the test taker has a mental illness or a history of mental illness. Screening people out on this basis could amount to unfair and unlawful discrimination.
Administering the test
Even where tests are measuring attributes of relevance to effective job performance in people with disabilities, there may still be a need to adjust the process of test administration to ensure that the candidate has the opportunity to demonstrate possession of the attribute. The difficulties faced by people with various types of disabilities cannot be categorised precisely because all disabilities are different. The best person to consult about the type of adjustment that might be helpful is the individual to be tested. The first step then is always to find out how the disability affects the person and this is best done prior to their arrival at the test centre.
Scoring and Interpretation
When a candidate has a disability it is important to take a more individualistic or qualitative approach to test interpretation.
Often the greatest impact of a person's disability on testing is the time it takes to complete the test. This clearly raises issues where norms are based on time constraints. Test users are advised to use the same norms that they would have used in the absence of the disability but, in the case of a candidate with a disability, to allow a greater band of error around the score.
Another solution is to administer the test under the timed conditions but once the time has elapsed, to allow the respondent to continue working using a pen of a different colour. This retains the timing for comparison purposes while giving some indication of how well the candidate could have done if given more time.
Written by Wendy Lord: Chief Psychologist, Hogrefe-Cranbrook Learning Centre.
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