Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and Methods

by Harry L. Hollingworth; Leta Stetter Hollingworth

D. Finally there are cases in which tests having vocational significance have been sought by purely haphazard and empirical ways. Thus Lough, having devised a form of substitution test in which certain characters had always to be replaced by certain others, according to a prescribed key, then proceeded to apply it to groups of commercial students. Speed of improvement was chosen as the thing of interest in respect to the test. Measures of this capacity, as shown by repeated trials with the same test day after day, were then compared with measures of ability in different types of work in which the students were engaged. It was found that the test records agreed very closely with the abilities in typewriting, fairly closely with abilities in business correspondence and stenography, whereas there was not such definite relation found between the test records and ability in learning the German language or in mathematics. The test is consequently recommended as a useful means of detecting typewriting and stenographic ability. It is not pretended that the test is a miniature of the work of such calling, nor that it is a fair sample of such work, nor even that it involves precisely the same mental functions that come into play in such work. The test records and ability in the particular type of work show high positive correlation, which means that an individual who is good or medium or poor in the one is, as a mere matter of fact, also found to be good, medium or poor in the other. Hence, without further analysis, the one may be used as the sign of the other.

Another good illustration of the use of this method is the study of Lahy, who put good, average and poor typewriters through a great number of tests of different sorts. He found that the only tests correlating closely with ability in the practical work were those for memory span, tactile and muscular sensibility, sustained attention, and equality of strength in the two hands.

Perhaps the most perfect example of this purely empirical procedure is the investigation which has now been conducted for several years by Mrs. Woolley and her co-workers in Cincinnati. Children who leave the grades to enter directly into some sort of industrial occupation are examined by a miscellaneous assortment of simple mental tests. These records are preserved, and the subsequent successes or failures of the pupils in the various sorts of work undertaken by them in later life are as carefully recorded as is possible. It is hoped that when a sufficient amount of material of this nature has been accumulated the two sets of data may be compared and information thereby secured concerning the relation between ability in the tests and the types and degrees of industrial fitness. At present only the test records have been published.

In a recent investigation an attempt was made to discover, by this empirical method, a set of mental tests which would aid in the selection of efficient workers in a specific field. Thirty workers who were already employed under fairly comparable conditions of work were taken as subjects in a preliminary search for tests of value. These thirty people were each put through a series of "association tests," of the familiar laboratory form, naming opposites, naming colors and forms, completing mutilated passages, following hard directions, giving responses bearing specified relations to stimulus words, cancellation and number checking, etc. While these tests were in progress, during a period of several days, the thirty workers were rated by three supervisors who were familiar with their work at the actual task, and who had for some time been observing their performance with a view to making subsequent judgments. Each supervisor arranged the thirty workers in an order of merit, according to his or her impression of their relative efficiency. The judgments of these three supervisors were then averaged and each worker assigned a final position on the basis of these averages. This was believed to be as accurate a measure of actual ability as could be secured under the complex conditions of work.

The results of these ratings were then compared with the results of the mental tests. Some of the tests were found not to correlate with the ratings for actual working efficiency. Three tests showed definite and positive correlations, as follows: Color-Naming (thirty-seven per cent), Hard Directions (forty per cent), Completion (thirty-three per cent). When results from these three tests were combined, the records correlated with the ratings by a coefficient of fifty-five per cent. These three tests were then accepted as having value in the selection of good operators, and search was continued for further tests which might also yield positive correlations. This investigation is again an illustration of the purely empirical method.

These four procedures in the search for useful vocational tests, in the absence of complete vocational psychographs, are quite generally recognized to be but tentative expedients of an explorative character. Individual workers have not always clearly recognized the principles involved in their work, but have proceeded as best they could under the special circumstances. Each method has its own defects and advantages. The miniature model has the advantage of concreteness and apparent relevance, but, as Münsterberg points out, "a reduced copy of an external apparatus may arouse ideas, feelings and volitions which have little in common with the processes of actual life." This writer is inclined to believe, on the basis of his experiments so far, that "experiments with small models of the actual industrial mechanism are hardly appropriate for investigations in the field of economic psychology. The essential point for the psychological experiment is not the external similarity of the apparatus, but exclusively the inner similarity of the mental attitude. The more the external mechanism with which or on which the action is carried out becomes schematized, the more the action itself will appear in its true character."

The second method we have described, viz., that of using as the test a real sample of the work done, has certain very obvious advantages. On the other hand, for the vocational test of this type to be at all significant, either the sort of work involved in the occupation must be fairly uniform and homogeneous in all its different circumstances (as in the case of typewriting at dictation, or in the work of filing clerks, accountants, etc.), or else there must be included a large number of samples representing all the various unrelated sorts of work. Moreover, in neither case is the test in any peculiar sense psychological. Such tests could perhaps be best conducted by the employer himself. In fact, employment on trial, which is a common method of selecting operatives and assistants, is a time-honored form of this test, which is not necessarily improved either by calling it psychological or by putting it in charge of a general expert or by removing it to the laboratory.

The third form of procedure is full of all sorts of difficulties and sources of error, many of which are, at the present stage of our knowledge, irremediable. In selecting a new test which will involve the same mental attitude and call for the exercise of the same psychological functions as are needed in the work itself, we are handicapped by the unreliability of the introspection of the examinee and also by our inadequate ability to recognize, identify and classify psychological functions even when we are confident that these are present. The statement of motormen that the manipulation of a crank in connection with a strip of checkered paper makes them feel quite as they do when guiding their cars through a crowded thoroughfare is far from a guaranty "that the mental function which they were going through had the greatest possible similarity with their experience on the front platform of the electric car." It is much more conceivable that the "mental attitude" referred to was merely the vague feeling that "Something is happening now," "This keeps me busy," or "What a nuisance this thing is." And even if we knew the mental functions involved, as would be demanded by the vocational psychograph method, we are still a long way from the time when we can exhibit even a single psychological test and state just what function or functions its performance does or does not, may or may not, involve. Indeed we do not even know what the various distinct mental functions are, or whether, as a matter of fact, there are such distinct functions.

After all, the miscellaneous, random, and purely empirical method of Lough, Lahy and Woolley seems to be the most promising experimental procedure for the immediate present, and perhaps for some time to come. This method is, to be sure, but a rough, provisional and unanalyzed expedient. It calls for long and patient coöperative labor. It does not at once afford us the systematic scientific insight which we may wish we possessed. But it will at least save us from the delusion that we already possess such insight, and it should serve to check the fervent and semi-religious zeal that leads us to mistake prophecy for service. Analysis and classification of the results which this method yields are possible when the results are accumulated in adequate measure.

It is essential that interest in this eminently practical use of the psychological laboratory be sustained among those who are responsible for the further promotion of its methods and problems. But it is undesirable that public expectation should be strenuously directed toward the laboratory until it has done more than the outlining of a series of problems and the initiation of preliminary efforts toward their solution. These specialized vocational methods, the miniature, the sampling, the analogy, and the empirical procedure, constitute four definite and promising instruments of research. They have yielded results of such demonstrable practical value, in the selection of special types of workers and in the detection of particular aptitudes and abilities, that the application of selected mental tests has already come to play an important rôle in the placement and training departments of a considerable number of industrial and commercial concerns. While the more slowly developing individual and vocational psychographs are being perfected, these specialized vocational tests will not only serve the purposes of temporary assistance and expedience, but the results derived from their intelligent use and their further patient elaboration will contribute materially toward the establishment of more complete and systematic technique.[7]