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OCR for page 209
11
In Whose Interest: Potential Effects of
the VG-GATB Referral System
The previous chapter described the U.S. Employment Service's
(USES) conceptual model of local office operations under the VG-GATB
Referral System. Although few offices have as yet switched entirely to the
new system, most using some combination of old and new procedures, it
is reasonable to ask what the effects might be if the full-scale version of
the VG-GATB Referral System envisioned in the mode! were to be widely
adopted in the Job Service. Indeed, the Department of Labor did ask the
committee to consider the likely impact of widespread adoption on
employers, minority job seekers, people with handicapping conditions,
and veterans.
Our treatment of the question, covered in this chapter, is necessarily
partly conjectural. There is very little systematic evidence available from
the pilot studies that speaks to the question of impact on the various Job
Service clients. In addition, the national reporting of data each year on
aggregate Job Service operations was discontinued in 1985, so there is no
longitudinal data base from which to glean any general before-and-after
comparisons. Nevertheless, we have ourselves gathered, and we have
received from our liaison group members and others in the interested
communities, enough information to be able to suggest certain likely
effects and to recommend alterations in USES policy in the interest of
particular client populations.
209
OCR for page 210
2~0 ASSESSMENT OF THE VG-GATB PROM
EFFECTS ON EMPLOYERS
The VG-CiATB Referral System is designed, in the first instance, to
serve the interests of employers. Overall, GATB validities support the
notion that referral on the basis of rank-ordered GATB scores will, in
general, bring modest increases in the estimated job performance of the
referred group of job candidates. In other words, using the VG-GATB
Referral System as an initial screen will on average provide the employer
with a somewhat more productive applicant pool than a nontested
population would provide. This effect is, of course, not independent of the
wages, benefits, and working conditions offered by the employer; the
more competitive workers will actively seek referral to the top employers
in a community. Moreover, the potential benefits to any given employer
would be diluted as the number of competing employers using the
test-based referral program increases.
Empirical support for the finding that top-down referral of tested
applicants would in general provide the employer with a set of applicants
with better-than-average estimated performance on the job is provided by
the Madigan et al. (1987) study of sewing machine operators, described in
the previous chapter. Workers with GATB Job Family V scores in the top
quarter needed 13.6 weeks on average to reach a given production
standard, whereas those in the lowest quarter of the distribution took 16.4
weeks to meet the standard. Correlations between GATB scores and
monthly production averages ranged from .15 to .24. In addition, there was
somewhat less attrition among the higher scorers. These results indicate
that the clothing manufacturer could have had a slightly more productive
work force by hiring on the basis of test scores, assuming there were
enough job seekers in the area to allow for selectivity. If the job order for
some 900 workers absorbed virtually all available labor in the area around
the five plants studied, then the test data would be irrelevant.
A number of employers, liaison group members as well as others,
contacted the committee about their experiences with the VG-GATB. As
might be expected, those who took the effort to write or phone had found
the test-based referral system valuable. One large midwestern corpora-
tion, which has used the Job Service as its sole supplier of semiskilled
labor for many years, was able to compare the traditional and the
VG-GATB procedures. With the advent of the VG-GATB system, the
company began to look at candidates on the basis of test scores. The
director of personnel reported a number of positive effects. First, the
tested cohorts were more likely than their predecessors to show up for the
entire application process, which involves repeat visits and multiple
screens. Supervisors found that the workers selected on the basis of test
scores worked out better on the floor, both in terms of performance and
OCR for page 211
POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF THE VG-GATB ~FE~L SYSTEM 21 ~
reduced absenteeism. One of the most interesting points made was that
top-down referral of tested candidates produced a group with better
literacy skills, which was considered a great boon in the auto industry
because of the need to retrain large segments of the work force every
three to five years.
Certain large employers have been attracted to the Job Service because
of the introduction of the testing program. The director of the Virginia
State Employment Commission and a member of the liaison group, Ralph
Cantrell, reported to the committee that the two largest employers in the
state list jobs with the Virginia Job Service solely because of its use of the
test. Several employers new to the state have required test-based screen-
ing, including a major Japanese firm, which indicated that it had chosen to
locate there at least in part because of the VG-GATB testing program.
Cantrell also notes that a number of Virginia employers who have
operations in other states report that the plants that select according to
test score outproduce their counterparts.
An Informal Survey of Employers
Thanks to the good offices of the Employers' National Job Service
Committee (ENJSC), these impressions can be fleshed out somewhat
with information derived from an informal survey of employers who have
used the VG-GATB system. A questionnaire, based on a set of questions
provided by the committee, was put together by the ENJSC steering
committee and sent to the state-level Job Service Employers' Committees
for distribution to employers known to be Job Service clients. Some
responses were returned to the ENJSC members for forwarding; others
came directly to the committee. In all, some 500 employers answered the
questionnaire.
Our discussion of the information provided by these employers must be
prefaced by a caution about overreliance on the responses. The question-
naire was constructed informally and was not pretested. That some
questions were occasionally misunderstood is apparent from the results.
Moreover, the respondents cannot be considered representative of Job
Service clients since the sample was not scientifically drawn. Within these
limitations, however, we can learn a good deal about the practices and
attitudes of 500 employers who have experience with their state Employ-
ment Service and the VG-GATB procedures.
Most of the employers who took part were medium-sized or small, with
64 percent reporting under 250 employees. The types of jobs they
reported filling through the Job Service are largely blue-collar and clerical
ones, although nearly a third of the respondents also use it to fill some
technical positions.
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2~2 ASSESSMENT OF THE VG-GATB PROM
How Respondents Use the VG-GATB Referral System
Virtually all the respondents reported that they use the VG-GATB
system as a preliminary screen only. In all, 99 percent interview the
applicants referred by the Employment Service, 94 percent require a
written application, 80 percent reported using reference checks, and
more than half administer a physical examination. A comparatively
small number, about 16 percent, reported administering additional
job-specific tests. (This response could be misleading; one suspects that
many clerical job orders would require a typing test in addition to the
GATB.)
Over half of the 500 employers in the survey said that they include
specific selection criteria in their job order. The two most common
requirements listed were job experience and the imposition of a minimum
cutoff score on the GATE (each criterion used by about 51 percent of
respondents), although over a third also reported imposing an education
requirement. Some 72 of the 500 respondents said that they have the Job
Service interview candidates for them.
One issue of interest to the committee was the number of candidates the
employers request per job opening. Among the 500 employers who
participated in this informal survey, there was a good deal of variety.
Many left the number of referrals up to the Job Service local office. A
small number reported that they request just one or two applicants per
opening, and an equally small number ask for 11 or more. Most of those
who stipulate a referral ratio ask for between 3 and 10 applicants per
opening; the median is 5. This information suggests that USES could
consider referral models that required two to five people to be referred for
each job opening without going beyond the common practice of many
employers.
Attitudes Toward the VG-GATB Referral System
A large majority of the respondents were favorably disposed toward the
VG-GATB system. It is important to remember that this group cannot be
considered representative of Job Service clients in general or of employ-
ers who have experience with the VG-GATB. We do not know how many
employers received the questionnaire and did not respond, nor have we
polled employers who choose to use the Job Service counselors in the
traditional way rather than requesting tested applicants. This group of 500
respondents should probably be looked on as predisposed to a positive
evaluation of the effectiveness of test-based referral. This does not mean
that their judgments should be disregarded, just that they cannot be
accepted as definitive.
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POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF THE VG-GATB REFEREE SYSTEM 2~3
Close to 90 percent of the respondents felt that the VG-GATB Referral
System improved the company's use of human resources. Among the
benefits most frequently checked off were decreased training time and
reduced interviewing time. Over a third claimed increased productivity
and a like number claimed reduced turnover. Only about 7 percent of
respondents said that the system did not improve the use of human
resources.
At the same time, about 37 percent wrote in disadvantages associated
with the VG-GATB system. The most frequent complaint was the
increased time lag between the employer's request and the filling of the
job order.
Equal Employment Opportunity ant! Affirmative Action
More than three-quarters of the respondents reported that they have an
affirmative action program in place. (Employers with fewer than 15
employees are not subject to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, so the
question would not necessarily be applicable to all who returned the
questionnaire. In addition, a small proportion of the questionnaires
omitted the question.) This would suggest that the general thrust of the
USES policy of adjusting the scores of minority-group candidates is in
step with the equal employment opportunity goals of many private-sector
employers.
However, the responses to questions about preferred scoring methods
suggest that many employers may not be very clear about that aspect of
the VG-GATB system. On the questionnaire, the within-group score
adjustment used in the VG-GATB system to avoid screening out minority
job seekers was explained. The questionnaire then asked which of four
scoring methods respondents find most advantageous: within-group per-
centile scores, total-group percentile scores, a combination of the two, or
pass/fail. It provided a very brief explanation of the first two. Some 20
percent of respondents indicated a preference for a pass/fail scoring
method, which means they either do not understand the new system or
are not involved with it. Only about 10 percent chose the within-group
option, and a few of the respondents wrote in that they did not realize that
the VG-GATB system included such score adjustments. About equal
numbers of respondents chose the other two options, with 37 percent of
respondents supporting the reporting of total-group scores and 35 percent
supporting a system combining total-group and within-group scores.
During the course of its study, the committee heard a good deal of
support for within-group scoring, particularly from larger employers.
Because large employers of necessity have a trained personnel manage-
ment staff, often including members with some expertise in tests and
OCR for page 214
2 ~ 4 ASSESSMENT OF THE VG-GATB PROGRAM
measurement, they may well be more aware of the implications of the
various scoring procedures than this group of medium-sized and small
employers seems to be. These responses appear to show a need for the
Employment Service to provide employers with better information about
the test scores reported and what they mean. We have specific recom-
mendations on the subject in Chapter 13 on referral and score reporting.
Possible Negative Effects
To this point, the potential effects of further use of the VG-GATB
appear to be largely salutary as far as employers are concerned. In
general, selecting the group of candidates to refer on the basis of
rank-ordered test scores should present the employer with a modestly
enriched pool of candidates to choose from. There is theoretical as well as
some empirical evidence to support this claim. The main drawback for the
individual employer so far mentioned is that in some areas it takes longer
for candidates to show up at the employer's door. If computerization of
local office operations proceeds apace and if regional job information
networks develop, this problem may be eased.
A different sort of problem could well emerge if the Department of
Labor decides to support the spread of the VG-GATB system. This
problem has to do with jobs that require significant prior preparation. The
claim is being made that the GATE predicts performance for all 12,000
jobs in the U.S. economy, and that it predicts best for the cognitively
more complex jobs. Although these claims may be true, they could also
badly mislead employers. Until now, the preponderance of test-based
referrals has been in less-skilled occupations, occupations that do not
require extensive prior education and/or training. If for legal, economic,
or other reasons employers eliminated more job-specific testing or assess-
ment and depended on this test of general cognitive abilities to fill jobs
with more stringent requirements, the more pertinent information about
an applicant's qualifications could be lost. This is not merely an academic
concern. At least one state is using the VG-GATB to construct the list of
eligibles for state merit system jobs, including jobs such as social worker.
EFFECTS ON JOB SEEKERS
Logistics
The most obvious effect of the VG-GATB Referral System on job
seekers is that they have to take a three-hour examination in order to be
considered for referral. As we have noted, most local offices have
implemented the new procedures as a supplement to, not a replacement
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POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF THE VG-GATB REFEREE SYSTEM 2~5
of, the old counselor-based system. But the conceptual model of a
full-scale VG-GATB system would close off the alternate route for most
applicants, making the test a necessary hurdle. Since many local offices
appear to administer the GATE just once a week, the applicant is likely to
be required to make two trips to the Job Service office, once to register
and again to take the test.
In contrast to the old system, this is not necessarily inefficient from the
applicant's point of view. USES field staff who have helped implement
the VG-GATB system argue that it is much less irksome for job seekers.
They point out that in large, busy Job Service offices, applicants often
have to wait around for hours until a job counselor is available. With the
new procedures, applicants are given an appointment for a specific day
and time, and thereafter could receive referrals by telephone.
There is some evidence of user attitudes that supports this assessment.
K.D. Scott and colleagues (1987), as part of a larger pilot study commis-
sioned by the State of Virginia, surveyed all job applicants who registered
with the Roanoke Job Service Office and took the GATE between January
and the end of April 1986. Almost 70 percent of the applicants, when
presented with six possible reactions from "strongly disagree" to
"strongly agree," agreed or strongly agreed that they "did not waste a lot
of time at the IS." Over 80 percent found the explanation of the testing
and referral process easy to understand, and about 88 percent found the
people at the Job Service helpful and courteous. This degree of positive
response suggests that, in terms of logistics, the VG-GATB system can
work well for job seekers.
Perceptions of Fairness
User perceptions of the more substantive benefits of VG-GATB referral
are somewhat less positive. A primary justification for standardized
testing, and therefore for VG-GATB referral, is that all applicants are
judged by an objective standard in this case, an objective measure of
abilities that are related to job performance. Proponents of the VG-GATB
point out that eliminating the subjective judgment of counselors, who may
be more or less able to match up suitable workers and jobs, can be
particularly important for individuals who incite deep-seated social or
cultural prejudices.
We agree that GATB-based referral could have a beneficial impact on
job seekers at least on competitive job seekers by reducing the possi-
bility of personal prejudice from referral decisions and by giving the Job
Service staff a better picture of the relative abilities of all the registrants
currently in the files. Particularly in heavy-volume Job Service offices, the
identification of prospective candidates could be less hit or miss.
OCR for page 216
2~6 ASSESSMENT OF THE VG-GATB PROM
However, there are other aspects to the question. Tests of general
ability such as the GATE are particularly valuable in assessing a youth
population, people without a lot of life and job experience. The Armed
Forces, for example, use a similar test to enlist and classify young men
and women, most of whom are between the ages of 17 and 23. Although
most have a high school education, few have specialized training or
extensive job experience. In that circumstance, it is difficult to propose an
alternative method of gauging an applicant's probability of success in the
military.
The Job Service deals with a very different clientele. It includes
people of all ages, many of whom have years of relevant job experience.
For such applicants, GATE scores are not the most important informa-
tion. The applicant's past record would give an employer a better sense
of likely future performance. Exclusive use of VG-GATB referral could
well preclude the candidate from being able to present or the employer
from being able to consider-that record. For example, the committee
has heard the complaint of a worker who apparently worked success-
fully for more than 15 years at a semiskilled job in the auto industry.
Now, after a period of illness, the worker is trying to get back into the
same line of work. But the firm has entered an agreement with the Job
Service so that access to the job is solely by test score. The worker is
being told that his test scores do not qualify him for the work that he
performed for many years. Without getting into the merits of the
particular case, the general point is well made that exclusive reliance on
the VG-GATB system would deprive some experienced workers of the
chance to compete for jobs they have already shown that they can in
fact perform.
There appears to be a significant degree of skepticism among job
seekers about making testing a necessary prerequisite to referral. Veter-
ans' organizations have protested the requirement on the grounds that
many unemployed veterans neither desire nor need to take such a general
test of abilities since, with an average age of 50, they have proven work
experience and training on which to be judged. Among some population
groups, the very existence of the VG-GATB will become a powerful
screen; many people simply will not use the Job Service. For example, in
one New Jersey office the experiment with the VG-GATB was cut short
when the applicant population, a largely minority population, simply
stopped using the Job Service.
The Roanoke survey (Scott et al., 1987) provides additional evidence of
unease with the test-based approach to job referral. (Although there is
less generalized resistance to tests in Roanoke than in the New Jersey
community mentioned above, note that the kind of people who aborted
the New Jersey experiment would not appear in the Roanoke survey
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POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF THE VG-GATB ~FE~ SYSTEM 2~7
sample, since only those who registered and took the GATB during a
specified period were given the questionnaire.) The Roanoke applicants
were asked to evaluate the following statements on a six-point scale from
"strongly disagree" to "strongly agree":
· The GATB was a fair test of my job abilities.
· A test is a fair way to decide which people should be referred to a job.
Of the 1,064 usable questionnaires, some 60 percent of respondents
registered at least slight agreement with each of the propositions, and 45
percent agreed or strongly agreed. But put the other way, about 40
percent of applicants did not perceive of the procedure as fair. (This
perception of unfairness increased somewhat in a follow-up survey 12
weeks after registration and testing; 50 percent of those who responded
had not yet been placed in a job.) There were no significant differences
between minority and majority applicants with regard to the fairness
questions, but applicants with advanced degrees (beyond high school)
were less favorably disposed toward the GATB than others, which has
implications for the USES hope that the VG-GATB Referral System will
make the Employment Service a more mainline employment agency and
help it shed its past reputation as a provider of last resort.
The evidence is far too limited to draw any broad conclusions about the
public acceptability of test-based referral. Still, it seems to suggest that
the elimination of other routes to referral could narrow the population of
job seekers willing to work through the Job Service, and, in some
communities, drastically so.
Low-Scoring Applicants
For job seekers with very low scores on the GATB, VG-GATB referral
will have predictable and completely negative effects. Such applicants
will be referred only to the least desirable jobs, if they are referred at all.
As we suggest elsewhere, there is a very real possibility that if the
VG-GATB system came to dominate the Employment Service system,
the effect would be to create a class of perpetually unemployed people,
identifiable from early school years as those who are the poor performers
on tests of general cognitive ability. Industrial society seems to require
less than full employment. It does not require, however, that one category
of citizen, low scorers on cognitive tests, be fated to permanent unem-
ployment. Our analysis of GATB validities demonstrates that there is too
much error in GATB scores for any argument from economic necessity to
be compelling. Even low-scoring applicants have a reasonable chance of
performing better than average on the job.
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2 ~ ~ ASSESSMENT OF THE VG-GATB PROGRAM
If the conceptual model of the full-service VG-GATB office incorpo-
rated special procedures for working with low-scoring applicants, our
concern about the rigidities and limitations of a referral system based on
cognitive test scores would not be as great. But in the VG-GATB system
as it is conceived, with the exception of statutorily mandated special
programs to assist handicapped veterans and perhaps handicapped appli-
cants more generally, those most in need of special assistance in finding
work would be funneled out of the Employment Service system. We
realize that this design is a reflection of the economic stringency that has
descended on the Employment Service both nationally and in the states.
It is, nevertheless, one of the important considerations that leads us to
recommend that VG-GATB referral in no instance be the only set of
procedures used in any local office.
Older Applicants
The evidence presented in Chapter 8 indicates that GATE validities
vary with the mean age of workers in the validation samples. More
specifically, the validity of the cognitive composite (GVN) tended to be
somewhat lower in studies in which the average age of the workers was
higher. The evidence also suggests the possibility that GATE scores
decline with age. The worker samples with higher mean age have notably
lower composite scores, particularly for the spatial (SPQ) and psychomo-
tor (KFM) composites.
This evidence raises the possibility that older workers workers whose
skills and experience testify to their ability to do the jo~will tend to be
excluded by the VG-GATB system.
EFFECTS ON MINORITY JOB SEEKERS
The single most important question with regard to the effects of the
VG-GATB Referral System on minority job seekers is whether the
government-in the near term the Justice Department, ultimately the
courts find score adjustments a legally and constitutionally acceptable
means of furthering equal employment opportunity goals. Chapter 13, on
referral methods and score reporting, presents some scientific reasons in
support of such a policy. But of course we cannot predict the ultimate
outcome.
Recent experience in the Employment Service system indicates that
minorities have been referred and employed at the same rate as the
majority group, although on the average to somewhat lower-paying jobs.
So long as the VG-GATB Referral System includes within-group score
adjustments, that should continue to be the case. A recent study of the
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POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF THE VG-GATB ~FE~L SYSTEM 2~9
application of the VG-GATB system in local Job Service offices in Salt
Lake City, Provo, and Logan, Utah (Robins, 1988), sustains these
expectations: minority applicants (who make up just 7.2 percent of the
work force) were placed at a slightly higher rate and in jobs of slightly
longer duration than the majority-group applicants. Furthermore, the
patterns of service delivery to majority and minority applicants were
similar for VG-GATB and regular local offices.
This would not be the case if VG-GATB referral were not accompanied
by score adjustments of the magnitude of the within-group percentile
scores. Without such adjustments, referral on the basis of rank-ordered
test scores would have very severe adverse impact on black and Hispanic
applicants. Empirical evidence indicates that the difference in average
test scores between majority- and minority-group members ranges from
0.5 to 1 standard deviation. When the average score difference is 1
standard deviation, then referral in order of test score will mean that if 20
percent of an applicant pool is referred to a job, about 20 percent of
majority applicants would be referred, compared with 3 percent of
minority applicants.
Even if a minimum competency system were used, with all referred at
random above a given cutoff score, a cutoff score at the 4th percentile of
the majority group would be required for minority applicants to be
referred at four-fifths the rate of majority candidates.
We conclude that the VG-GATB Referral System will be viable only if
it includes some kind of adjustment of minority scores, so long as the
government is committed to a policy of equal employment opportunity
that looks to the effects of employment practices on racial and ethnic
minority groups.
Assessing Applicants Who Have Marginal English Skills
Foreign-born applicants, whose command of the English (or perhaps
any written) language is marginal, cannot be reasonably assessed with the
GATB. In some states, particularly in the Southwest and the West, such
people constitute a large proportion of the likely Job Service client
population.
The problem was well expressed by a professional vocational evaluator
working in the state of California (letter from Julia Edgcomb, dated
November 23, 1988~. Between 40 and 60 percent of this evaluator s clients
are non-English-speaking; most of them have a maximum of six years of
formal education, with three years being common. Many have been
working since the age of 10 and are now trying to find careers outside
farmwork. The GATE will portray these job seekers as of very low
cognitive abilities because of language difficulties, lack of formal educa
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224 ASSESSMENT OF THE VG-GATB PROGRAM
responses for applicants with motor handicaps, and so on, take time. In
Chapter 5 we discussed the highly speeded character of the GATB. The
time pressure that all applicants encounter would be particularly discon-
certing for those with handicaps.
Should Handicapped Applicants Take the GATB?
Given the thin research base on modified forms of the GATB and, more
generally, the great uncertainties about the meaning of the scores
achieved by many applicants with handicapping conditions, policy mak-
ers might wonder if such applicants should be tested at all. The wisest
course is to leave the decision to the applicant. If appropriately modified
tests are available, and if they are knowledgeably administered, they
might provide the applicant with a means of demonstrating skills and
capabilities relevant to job performance.
The committee has received communications from a number of job
counselors and vocational rehabilitation specialists who have long expe-
rience with the GATB and who have found it a useful assessment tool.
They also emphasized that it is not always the best method for assessing
the capabilities of disabled job seekers and that the imposition of any one
instrument could be very damaging to the prospects of such applicants.
The inflexible implementation of VG-GATB procedures would cer-
tainly not be in the interest of job seekers with handicaps. Referral by
rank-ordered scores would tend to deprive them of the chance even to be
in the running for jobs, and, as we said at the beginning, often arbitrarily.
The committee was informed of one such instance. A candidate for a state
job as an accounting clerk, who has disabilities including a hearing
impairment and cerebral palsy, met the requirements, was placed on the
list of eligibles, and was sent out on several job interviews. However,
before the applicant found a position the VG-GATB system was imple-
mented and all on the list of eligibles had to take the test. On the new list
of eligibles, this applicant no longer made the cutoff.
Above all, we recommend that the Employment Service continue to
provide the services of job counselors to work with handicapped appli-
cants to find the best means of assessing their skills and of bringing their
performance potential to the attention of likely employers. Since state
rehabilitation agencies have a wealth of expertise in vocational counseling
for people with handicaps, it could well make sense to coordinate their
work more closely with that of the Employment Service. One possible
option would be to detail state rehabilitation agency counselors to Job
Service offices that serve a sizable handicapped clientele.
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POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF THE VG-GATB REFEREE SYSTEM 225
In any case, handicapped applicants can be served fairly and appropri-
ately only if the Employment Service system remains flexible and
responsive to the particular circumstances of each of them.
EFFECTS ON VETERANS
Because the Public Employment Service is a source of benefits for
veterans of military service, the introduction of new referral procedures
necessarily involves the interests of this constituency. Representatives of
military veterans have expressed concern that adoption of the VG-GATB
Referral System could conflict with the preference or priority in federal
employment and training services granted to most veterans as a matter of
law.
Three major veterans' groups have communicated with the committee:
the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Disabled
American Veterans. All have called for the Department of Labor to
enunciate a nationally consistent policy for implementing veterans' pref-
erence in the Employment Service system. They have also expressed
opposition to exclusive use of the VG-GATB system for referral by the
Job Service on the grounds that many veterans (average age 50) have no
desire to take a written test, preferring instead to be referred on the basis
of work experience and training. The American Legion has adopted no
official position on the question of using within-group score adjustments
to prevent the test-based referral system from adversely affecting the
employment opportunities of protected minorities (Rhoades, 1988~. The
Veterans of Foreign Wars has formally adopted the view that such
adjustments represent an abridgement of the entitlements of nonminority
veterans since no equivalent adjustments are made to veterans' scores
(Veterans of Foreign Wars, 1987~.
The History of Veterans' Preference
The first federal law granting employment preference to military
veterans was passed at the end of the Civil War. By joint resolution,
Congress mandated in March 1865 that persons who had been honorably
discharged due to injury or illness incurred in the line of duty should be
preferred for appointment to civil jobs, provided that they "possess the
business capacity necessary for the proper discharge of the duties of such
offices." The hiring preference accorded to disabled veterans was reaf-
firmed in the act creating the modern civil service in 1883, although the
eligibility requirements were sufficiently restrictive in these early years
that only a few hundred cases came before the Civil Service Commission
annually.
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226 ASSESSMENT OF THE VG-GATB PROGRAM
Throughout the years, the operational definition of veterans prefer-
ence has varied widely; as policy makers were persuaded at one point
in time by those who pursued efficiency in government through merit
hiring, and at another by those who considered public employment a
rightful reward for military service. For example, in 1881 the Attorney
General construed veterans preference narrowly to mean that a
disabled veteran should be granted preference only when his qualifica-
tions were equal to those of other candidates what might be called a
tie-breaker rule. This interpretation was overturned in 1910 when the
Attorney General ruled that the law required absolute preference for
disabled veterans on the list of eligibles (U.S. Civil Service Commis-
sion, 1955; Manela, 1976~.
In the immediate aftermath of World War I, the scope of veterans
preference was expanded dramatically to include not just disabled veter-
ans, but all honorably discharged soldiers, sailors, and marines, the
widows of such servicemen, and the wives of disabled veterans who were
not themselves qualified to hold civil service positions. Until 1944,
authority to promulgate the rules implementing the Preference Act of 1919
lay with the president. Executive Order 3152 (Aug. 18, 1919) gave
absolute preference to all veterans passing competitive examinations with
a minimum score of 65. As a consequence, claims to the Civil Service
Commission for veterans preference went from between 600 and 900 per
year to 60,000 or 70,000 per year. Questions were rapidly raised about the
sacrifice in efficiency in the civil service caused by placing all veterans at
the top of the registers of eligibles.
With the support of the American Legion, the Civil Service Commis-
sion in 1923 recommended to the president that a system of adding points
be instituted 5 points for veterans and 10 points for disabled veterans-
in place of absolute priority above a minimum cutoff score. It would, the
commission argued, provide a substantial benefit without being seri-
ously detrimental to efficiency. Absolute priority was restored to veterans
with military service-connected disabilities in 1929 because of complaints
that the simple addition of 10 points was not resulting in a sufficient
number of appointments for such veterans.
After years of negotiation, the three major veterans organizations
(the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Disabled
American Veterans), the Civil Service Commission, and the House and
Senate Committees on Civil Service reached a compromise arrange-
ment one that attempted to strike a balance between the principles of
merit and reward for military service. This compromise agreement was
codified in the Veterans Preference Act of 1944. In broad outline, the
act provided preference for veterans in federal employment as follows:
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POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF THE VG-GATB REFER^L SYSTEM 227
Civil Service examinations. Disabled veterans are given an additional
10 points on competitive examinations; other veterans receive 5 extra
points; and, in certain circumstances, spouses, widows, and mothers
receive 10 points above their earned score. (Since 1953, the points have
been added only to the scores of veterans who reach a passing score.)
Eligibility lists. The names of 5-point veterans are placed on the list of
eligibles in order of their augmented score; in cases of ties with nonvet-
erans, the veteran precedes. Until 1953, disabled veterans continued to be
placed at the top of the list of eligibles; since then, the additional
preference of absolute priority on the list of eligibles has been restricted
to veterans who receive disability compensation or who have a military
service-connected disability and is not available for scientific and profes-
sional positions of GS-9 or higher.
Civil Service appointments. The 1944 act codified the so-called rule of
three, according to which the top three names on the register of eligibles for
a particular position are forwarded to the appointing officer for consider-
ation. The selecting officer can pass over a veteran in favor of competing
nonveterans only with the approval of the Civil Service Commission.
The Public Employment Service and Veterans' Preference
Since its own creation by the Wagner-Peyser Act of 1933, the Public
Employment Service has had major responsibility for promoting veter-
ans' employment. The act provided for veterans' preference and in
addition instructed that a federal employee with the title State Veterans'
Employment Representative be detailed to every state. The Service-
men's Readjustment Act of 1944 created the position of Local Veterans'
Employment Representative so that every full-service local office of the
Employment Service has an official in place who oversees local activities
to ensure that veterans are accorded all priorities, privileges, and services
to which they are entitled by federal law.
The statutory basis for these entitlements is found in Title 38, Chapter
41, of the United States Code, which authorizes a national program of job
counseling, training, and placement services for eligible veterans and for
certain spouses of veterans. Eligibility is defined very broadly to include
any person who has served on active duty for at least 180 days and has
been discharged other than dishonorably, or who was discharged due to
a military service~onnected disability. Since 1980, the statute has placed
responsibility for veterans' employment and training services with the
Assistant Secretary of Labor for Veterans' Employment. The State
Directors for Veterans' Employment and, nowadays, the Assistant State
Directors (one for every 250,000 eligible veterans and spouses), are
administratively responsible to the Assistant Secretary.
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228 ASSESSMENT OF THE VG-GATB PROM
From the moment a veteran enters a local Job Service office, special
services are made available. The Local Veterans' Employment Repre-
sentative is to supervise the registration of veterans and provide a special
orientation on available training, counseling, and placement services,
including federally funded employment and training programs under the
Emergency Veterans' lob Training Act of 1983 or the Disabled Veterans'
Outreach Program; to promote job development activities such as job
fairs; to maintain a data base with information about job opportunities; to
encourage employers and labor unions to employ those eligible for
veterans' preference and to conduct apprenticeship and on-thejob train-
ing programs for them; to supervise job listings of federal contractors to
ensure compliance with veterans' set-asides; to identify and assist veter-
ans with readjustment problems; and so on (Fraas, 19831.
Veterans' Priority in Referral
The VG-GATB Referral System, because it would dramatically alter
referral procedures in the Employment Service system, has been a topic
of concern to the veterans' organizations and to the Assistant Secretary of
Labor for Veterans' Employment. Although definitive policies have not
yet been enunciated by the agency for the guidance of states that are using
VG-GATB referral procedures, some general outlines of Department of
Labor policy are visible.
The basic principle of referral priority is that qualified veterans shall be
referred before qualified nonveterans. Definition of the word qualified is
the crux of the matter. In the narrowest interpretation, it would mean that
between two applicants with exactly the same test scores, the veteran
would be placed ahead of the nonveteran on the referral roster. In the
most generous decision rule, all veterans who met the employer-imposed
cutoff score (if such there be) would be referred before all nonveterans.
The Department of Labor seems to have decided that a number of
alternatives for defining qualified are acceptable; neither the Assistant
Secretary for Veterans' Employment nor USES has promoted a particu-
lar procedure for implementing veterans' priority in the VG-GATB
Referral System. And there are dramatic differences in the methods
chosen by the states to keep the VG-GATB program in compliance with
the statutory requirements. Of the 35 states reporting their procedures in
a 1987 survey by the Department of Labor, 24 schedule veterans ahead of
others for testing and/or referral. Those that grant veterans referral
priority typically put a 24-hour hold on new job orders, during which time
only veterans are contacted from the VG-GATB call-in list.
In ranking candidates, 16 states accord veterans absolute priority
regardless of test score, ranking all veterans ahead of all nonveterans on
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POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF THE VG-GATB ~FE~L SYSTEM 229
the VG-GATB call-in list. One state applies this rule only for those in the
50th to 99th percentiles. Eleven states apply a docile method in which
veterans within each decile are referred first from the top down; one state
uses a decile variation in which veterans within 10 percentile points are
referred first, from the top down. Three states add from 5 to 10 points to
veterans' percentile scores and apply veterans' priority in the case of ties.
Another three states apply only the tie-breaker rule.
It is noteworthy that the absolute-priority rule adopted by 16 states is
far more generous than the preference accorded veterans in traditional
federal civil service hiring (procedures for entry-level hiring are currently
undergoing change). In that system, test scores are augmented by 5 to 10
points (depending on disability status). Referrals are made from a single
list of eligibles three at a time, from the top down. The hiring official has
discretion in selecting among the three, except that if a veteran in the
group of three is not the one selected, the decision must be approved by
the Office of Personnel Management.
Although there has not been uniformity of procedures for extending
priority in referral in the past, the veterans' organizations have ex-
pressed sharp dissatisfaction with this laissez-faire approach. They are
calling for the Department of Labor to issue explicit guidelines or rules
for a uniform system of veterans' priority under VG-GATB referral
procedures, because the welfare of veterans is a national responsibility
and they should therefore be accorded the same treatment in every
state. Although they would prefer absolute priority, the veterans'
organizations are not pushing for a specific rule. In a formal statement
to the committee, Dennis Rhoades, spokesman for the American
Legion and member of the committee's liaison group, described two
possible approaches to providing veterans' preference in a local office
operating under the VG-GATB system: the first would be to continue to
rely on the method that times referrals, sending only qualified veterans
(in rank order) in response to a job order for the first 24 or 48 hours. The
second means would be to apply ordering preference within a range of
percentile scores. Although not coming out in favor of a particular
approach, Rhoades, like his colleagues in the other veterans' organiza-
tions, did reject a simple tie-breaker rule as incompatible with the spirit
of the law (Rhoades, 19881.
Veterans and Within-Group Score Adjustments
Questions have been raised about a possible conflict between the
VG-GATB within-group scoring procedure and veterans' statutory
entitlement to preferential treatment in employment referral. The
American Legion maintains a neutral position on score adjustments
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230 ASSESSMENT OF THE VG-GATB PROGRAM
intended to promote equal employment opportunity for minority-group
members "if there is validity established for their use." The Veterans
of Foreign Wars, however, has taken the position that the conversion of
minority scores is illegal because it deprives nonminority veterans of
their legal right to priority in referral. The point was illustrated in a
letter (dated May 3, 1988) to the Assistant Secretary of Labor for
Veterans' Employment and Training from Robert L. Jones as follows:
if a white veteran receives a Job Family IV percentile score of 41, any
black applicant with an identical raw score will receive a percentile
score of 81; the score for a Hispanic applicant would be 63, and that for
a Native American, 59.
There is no doubt that within-group score adjustments would have the
elect of drawing minority applicants (veteran and nonveteran alike) into
the referral pool while excluding majority-group veterans with the same
raw scores. It is also true that government grants of preferential treatment
can never be absolute; one person's preference qualifies that of the other.
Whether the preference granted by statute to veterans takes precedence
over federal attempts to remedy the effects of discrimination against
blacks and other protected groups in this case seems to be an open
question.
Some have suggested that the way to resolve the issue is to compute
adjustments in the scores of veterans as a group. Were there average
group differences between veterans and nonveterans, it would be possible
to consider such a solution. However, based on admittedly limited data
comparing scores in all five job families for two groups defined by veteran
status, it appears that veterans and nonveterans have roughly the same
mean percentile scores. For example, the 1987-1988 figures for one local
office in Michigan show:
Average Percentile Score
Job Family
Veterans
(N= 1,100)
Nonveterans
(N= 3,900)
IV 54 52
V 53 55
The statewide applicant pool in Utah in early 1988 shows:
Average Percentile Score
Job Family
Veterans
(N= 9,958)
Total
(N= 93,504)
IV 50.36 52.14
V 47.00 53.82
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POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF THE VG-GATB REFEREE SYSTEM 23)
Unless there are larger average group differences, development of con-
version tables for veterans would not significantly change their chances of
referral. But a test-based system that does not have some adjustment like
the current within-group conversions would seriously reduce the chances
of minority veterans.
FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Employers
Conclusions
1. Although empirical evidence is sparse, the use of VG-GATB scores
top-down to refer applicants appears to offer an employer benefits such as
modest improvements in worker performance and reduced training time.
Certainly a large majority of the employers who communicated with the
committee perceived the VG-GATB system to improve their use of
human resources.
2. However, these benefits will tend to attenuate as more employers
who compete in the same labor market adopt VG-GATB procedures.
Job Seekers
Conclusions
1. Compared with subjective procedures, test-based referral can po-
tentially reduce the risk that racial or ethnic prejudice will influence
referral decisions.
2. At the same time, tests are fallible and they give a narrow reading on
human capabilities. To limit all job seekers to a single test-based modality
would artifically restrict the opportunities of many applicants.
3. The VG-GATB system has the potential disadvantage for older,
experienced workers of basing referral on less relevant information (test
score) when more relevant information (past job performance) is avail-
able.
4. The VG-GATB Referral System, were it to be the only mode of
referral offered through the Employment Service system, would consign
the lowest-scoring applicants to receiving little or no assistance in finding
work when, in fact, many such applicants could perform satisfactorily on
the job.
5. Without the kind of adjustments currently made to the scores of
black, Hispanic, and in some cases Native American applicants, the
VG-GATB Referral System would have severely adverse impact on
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232 ASSESSMENT OF THE VG-GATB PROGRAM
members of these demographic groups. The severity of the adverse
impact leads us to conclude that the VG-GATB Referral System is
probably not viable without adjustment of minority scores so long as the
government is committed to a policy of equal employment opportunity
that looks to the effects of employment practices on racial and ethnic
minority groups.
6. It is not reasonable to use the GATB to estimate the abilities of foreign-
born applicants who have a marginal command of the English language.
Recommendations
We recommend that no job seeker be obliged to take the GATB;
every local office that uses VG-GATB referral should maintain an
alternate referral path for those who choose not to take the test.
2. Because tests provide only partial information about future job
performance, we recommend that local Job Service offices that adopt the
VG-GATB Referral System continue to use multiple criteria in choosing
which applicants to refer.
People with Handicapping Conditions
Findings
1. The central scientific questions concerning the use of standardized
tests to estimate the academic or job performance of people with
handicaps have revolved around the question of comparability. When
such tests are modified to accommodate visual, hearing, motor, or other
handicaps, do the modified and regular instruments measure the same
abilities? Even if they do, are the resulting scores comparable?
2. Recent research carried out by the Educational Testing Service to
investigate these questions in terms of its major cognitive test batteries,
particularly the Scholastic Aptitude Test Battery, demonstrates the
extreme difficulty of gathering sufficient data to answer these questions
empirically. Although the SAT is one of the three largest testing programs
in the country and is supported by an extensive data base, the ETS
research team had great difficulty assembling an "even minimally suffi-
cient" data set to study the validity of scores on modified versions of the
SAT for predicting first-year college grade-point average. It was virtually
impossible to take account of degree of handicap, and even within type of
handicap the numbers for whom all data were available were often small.
Even greater obstacles would confront an effort by USES to establish the
comparability of scores on regular and modified forms of the GATB. The
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POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF THE VG-GATB ~FER~L SYSTEM 233
problem of inadequate sample sizes would be even more severe, and the
job performance criterion would be more difficult to capture.
Conclusions
1. The GATE cannot play the same role in assessing the qualifications
of handicapped and nonhandicapped applicants.
2. Because matching people with handicaps to jobs necessitates con-
sideration both of their abilities and of their particular disabilities in light
of specific job requirements, the VG-GATB Referral System, with its
emphasis on test scores and automated file search, is not adequate to the
situation. Job counselors are essential to the referral process for handi-
capped applicants.
Recommendations
1. For applicants with handicapping conditions we recommend the
continued use of job counselors to make referrals.
2. The GATE should be used when feasible to assess the abilities of
handicapped applicants, but as a supplement to decision making, not to
take the place of counseling services.
3. Because special expertise in assessing the capabilities of people
with handicaps is necessary and available, we recommend that the
Department of Labor encourage closer coordination between state
rehabilitation agencies and the State Employment Service Agencies.
Consideration should be given to placing state rehabilitation counselors
in local Employment Service offices that service a sizable handicapped
population.
4. Steps should be taken to ensure that no job order is filled automati-
cally and solely through the VG-GATB system. Job counselors who serve
handicapped applicants, disabled veterans, or other populations with
special needs must have regular access to the daily flow of job orders.
Veterans
Conclusions
1. The language of the legislation and regulations conferring priority or
preference in employment on military veterans consistently uses the
terminology "qualified veterans." We infer from this that the intent of
Congress was to balance considerations of productivity with preferential
treatment for veterans.
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234 ASSESSMENT OF THE VG-GATB PROGRAM
2. One of the methods of referral priority in use, the tie-breaker
method, provides little advantage to veterans.
3. Absolute priority (ranking all veterans before all nonveterans
regardless of test score), however, ignores the goal of promoting produc-
tivity. It effectively removes the word "qualified" from the implementa-
tion of the law.
4. Although two of the methods of referral priority, variants of the
decile method, confer quite a bit of advantage on veterans, adding points
to percentile scores has the anomalous effect of helping veterans with high
scores substantially more than veterans with moderate test scores.
Recommendations
1. If government policy is to strike a balance between maximizing
productivity and preference for veterans in employment referral through
the VG-GATB Referral System, the Employment Service should adjust
veterans' VG-GATB scores by adding a veterans' bonus of some number
of points before conversion to percentiles. Unadjusted expectancy scores
should also be reported to employers and job seekers.
It should be noted on the referral slip that the percentile score has been
adjusted for veterans' preference. If the federal rule were followed, the
size of the adjustment would range from one-eighth to one-quarter of a
standard deviation corresponding to 5 and 10 percentile points, depending
on disability status.
2. The Employment Service should continue to meet the needs of
disabled veterans through individualized counseling and placement
services.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
employment service
