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INTRODUCTION

employment  manager  has  some  principles  of  selection
which  operate  in  advance  of  an  actual  trial.  Among
these  means  of  provisional  selection  or  limitation  of  the
numbers  for  actual  trial,  objective  measurements  of  the
candidate’s  abilities  and  achievements  and  aptitudes  are
being  adopted  rapidly  by  progressive  employers.  Among
such  objective  measurements,  those  devised  by  psychologists ­
  have  recently  attracted  special  attention  by  their
promise  of  special  usefulness.  They  seem  destined  to
save  time,  trouble,  and  money  in  many  cases.
Dr.  Link’s  book  is  important  because  it  gives  an  honest,
impartial  account  of  the  use  of  psychological  tests  under
working  conditions  in  a  representative  industry.  He  has
the  great  merit  of  writing  as  a  man  of  science  assessing
his  own  work,  not  as  an  enthusiast  eager  to  make  a  market
for  psychology  with  business  men.  Indeed  the  story  of
his  experiments  is  distinctly  conservative,  for  in  many
cases  he  could  have  obtained  an  even  better  prediction
of  success  at  a  given  job  than  he  did  obtain,  by  applying
the  technique  of  partial  correlations  and  the  regression
equation  so  as  to  obtain  a  weighted  composite  score  from
a  team  of  tests.
Dr.  Link’s  book  also  gives  much  valuable  detail  concerning ­
  the  practical  arrangements  for  investigating  the  merits
of  tests  and  for  putting  satisfactory  ones  into  operation.
It  will  be  read  with  interest  and  profit  by  students  of
psychology  and  of  business  and  industrial  efficiency.
Edward  L.  Thorndike.

1 Teachers*  College,  Columbia  University.