APPRENTICE TOOLMAKERS AND MACHINISTS 125
was asked to rank the men in the order of their ability
to learn the prescribed work. At the same time, he was
asked also to rank his men according to the opinion he had
formed of them when they first came into the shop. The
Method by which these ranks were obtained is probably
Worth describing for the aid which it may be to other
experimenters.
It had been found that, usually, when a foreman is
asked to rank the men or women under him, he is unable
to rank them in any but the crudest form. He may call
one group good, another fair, and a very few, poor. This
crudity is often due to the fact that it is extremely difficult
to make an accurate classification mentally. In order to
overcome this difficulty, the name of every person tested
Was written on a small card. The pack of cards was then
handed to the foreman and he was asked to divide all
the men into three equal groups, according to their ability.
This was comparatively easy. Having done this, he was
f“ext asked to take each group and arrange the cards in
in the same way. Thus, by dividing the work and by
taking the mechanics of the classification simple and
helpful, an unambiguous and probably more reliable
result was obtained. The tests were then also ranked
ar >d compared with the ranking of the men being trained.
The correlations found were: plus .81 for the form-board
test, plus .75 for the cube test, plus .84 for the Stenquist
tes t, and plus .90 for the three tests combined. These
correlations are unusually high, but they were based not
0t i the foreman’s first impression of the men but his mature
opinion after having been in close contact with them
during several weeks of intensive training. (The foreman
Ww nothing whatsoever of the performance of the men
m the tests when he made his rankings.) The ranking of
