9 8 
EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
letter and number-substitution test bears to typists and 
stenographers. It has been found that this test correlates 
very well with the subsequent ability of operators who are 
not expert at the time when the tests are given. The so- 
called general-intelligence tests which have been applied 
to comptometer operators thus far have not shown any 
marked correlation with their ability as operators. Since 
the work on which these operators are engaged requires 
intelligence of a peculiar kind this is not surprising. 
After tests had been given to applicants for comptom- 
etry for several months, the value of the tests had won the 
recognition of most of those concerned. A certain official, 
however, head of the largest group of operators, remained 
skeptical and would not admit that the tests had been suc 
cessful in selecting operators for his group. In order to 
convince him and also for the sake of making further im 
provements in the tests themselves, this official was asked 
to allow an experiment to be conducted with some of the 
members of his group. He consented to the proposition 
upon two conditions: First, he was to be permitted to 
select the girls to be tested; and secondly, he was to keep 
the standing of these girls unknown to the experimenters 
until the latter had completed their ranking of the girls 
according to the tests and were prepared to submit these 
rankings to him in written form. These conditions were 
naturally acceptable, since it is situations of exactly this 
kind that employment tests are calculated to meet. This 
official then selected twelve girls for the experiment, and 
the comptometry tests discussed here and given in the 
Appendix were given to them group-wise. When the re 
sults were complete, the twelve girls were arranged in one, 
two, three order. This was done both for each test in 
dividually and on the basis of the tests taken collectively.