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andy
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« on: September 24, 2008, 11:40:27 PM » |
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This is now public domain and give a bit of insight into scoring:
The Home Office commissioned the application form sift to ensure a single high standard of applicant proceeding to the assessment centre.
As you are aware there is a significant cost associated with processing and assessing applicants at the assessment centre. The Home Office wanted to ensure that candidates reaching the centre had the best possible chance of passing by taking some measure of competence before offering an assessment centre and Westshire Constabulary incurring the costs of that assessment. During development of the application form focus groups were held with applicants to ensure the instructions and layout were to their liking.
The form was tested with many diverse groups to ensure everyone, irrespective of age, academic background, employment history, age, gender and ethnic group were afforded the same chance to be sifted in to the next stage of assessment. The form is based directly upon the Integrated Competency Framework for Police, which was extensively researched to ensure that the behaviours being measured in the application form are those most relevant to the job.
As assessors, we only have sight of the five pages from the application form that give the four examples used in assessing competency, and the page of background questions. This is a deliberate attempt to ensure that everyone is assessed fairly, without information about academic qualifications, work history, sickness, age, gender or ethnic origin playing any part in the assessment.
Each of the questions in the application form taps one of the 4 competencies from the competency framework. These 4 competencies have been shown to have a strong statistical relationship with the other competencies from the constable profile.
We only test these four because of this strong relationship and because more lengthy applications tend to put off applicants to the service, and do not necessarily add value at this early stage. Assessors are looking for key behaviours that the research has shown underpin those competencies. If they clearly see the behaviour they award a mark. If they don’t see it clearly they don’t award a mark.
The number of marks awarded under the competency are then added up and graded from A through to D. The more of the key behaviours evidenced, the higher the grade. This is a statistical process based upon the scores of 1000 or so people involved in the pilots when the form was developed and the analysis of another 3500 application in live use. If you are technically minded, the grading is based upon the average (mean score) that all other candidates have achieved on that question, and the Standard Deviation (the degree to which scores are spread out).
Thus, around 15% will achieve the top and lower grades ( A and D grades) and the remaining people will achieve the two middle grades (B and C). A ‘D’ grade means that, when compared to other candidates, your score was within the bottom 15% (or thereabouts). This process is repeated for each question, and then the overall number of marks are added up to give an overall score.
The overall score is also graded, in the same way as the competency questions, by comparing that score to the scores others have achieved. To pass the sift candidates have to achieve a ‘B’ grade in 3 out of the 4 competencies, or a ‘B’ grade in 2 out of the 4 competencies, and a ‘B’ grade overall. This allows a candidate to make up for a weak score in one or even two competencies, with a stronger score in other competencies.
It should be noted that in order to account for any variation in scores awarded by different assessors the mark at which a ‘PASS’ is awarded has been lowered. Thus an application that falls one mark below the pass mark is in fact some distance from passing. Where assessors are undecided on whether to award a particular mark they may, on balance, give the mark on the basis of ‘the benefit of the doubt’. However, candidates can only receive this benefit once in the application, and only when the evidence is so finely balanced that the assessor cannot decide.
Since October 2004 those candidates who have passed the competency sift have an assessment made about their standard of written spelling and grammar. The standard is linked to the standard at the national assessment centre. Finally, if that written standard is passed successfully a judgement as to whether there are elements within their application form which raise concerns over their values or motivations (questions 5-10).
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