CRITERIA OF VOCATIONAL SUCCESS an 
will be found that usable measures of quantity and quality 
of output of individual workers are not to be had. The 
investigator may save time in the long run by pausing to 
devise and standardize performance examinations—typical 
sample jobs by means of which he can determine how ably 
the workers can do their work. The scores made on these 
standard examinations will serve as criteria of their voca- 
tional ability and success. The investigator must be sure 
the piece of work selected for the examination is repre- 
sentative; that variables, such as working conditions, ma- 
terials, tools, and incentives can be held constant; and that 
he can get a measure of the performance in terms either of 
objectively definable gradations of quality of the product, 
or of time required to make it. The duties of an office 
worker are often so varied that the records of the manage- 
ment yield no suitable measures of her ability. To get 
one measure of her success she may then be examined and 
compared with the other workers in actual performance by 
use of standard tests in typing, taking dictation, comput- 
ing, filing, or whatever her chief duties are. Standard 
tasks have similarly been used as examinations of factory 
workers, draftsmen, dentists, bacteriologists, and many 
other semiskilled, skilled, and professional workers. 
A valuable lesson is to be learned from the experience of 
investigators of college personnel problems, particularly in 
studying the selection of students for admission, their 
classification and assignment, and the prediction of their 
relative success in different types of college work. The 
criteria first used were the marks or grades the students 
got in their courses. The student was deemed to have 
succeeded or failed according to whether he received enough 
passing marks to enable him to stay in the college or 
course he had chosen. But the available examination 
marks were usually found not to furnish a sufficiently sound 
criterion of what the students were accomplishing. It be- 
came necessary to devise the new-type examination, much 
more searching and comprehensive, much more definite and 
37