THE FUTURE OF CRITERION‐RELATED VALIDITY¹

Abstract

As a result of rejection by personnel psychologists of the erroneous law of small numbers and of the adoption of correct inferential procedures, the future of criterion‐related validity promises to be bright. Probable future developments include: (a) widespread appreciation of the low statistical power characteristic of small samples; (b) rejection of the traditional belief that validities are situationally specific; (c) widespread validity generalization based on new methods; (d) research demonstrations that rational estimates of validity are often superior in accuracy to empirical estimates; (e) widespread acceptance of research findings showing that single‐group and differential validity by race are artifactual rather than substantive in origin and that test unfairness by race is a nonproblem; (f) increased application of decision‐theoretic dollar utility analyses to selection programs; and (g) progress in the establishment of general principles and theories about trait‐performance relations in the world of work.