3°

EMPLOYMENT  PSYCHOLOGY

touched  was  then  read  on  a  scale  under  the  lower  bar.
Each  subject  was  given  fifteen  trials  and  the  last  ten  were
averaged  and  constituted  the  subject’s  record  for  this
test.
These  eight  tests  were  given  to  seventy-three  girls.
Fifty-two  were  inspectors,  and  twenty-one  were  gaugers.
The  work  of  gauging  will  be  described  later.  It  was  impossible ­
  to  test  a  larger  number  of  girls  because  the  experiment ­
  came  at  a  time  when  the  work  of  shell  inspection
was  rapidly  slowing  up  and  a  majority  of  the  girls  were
being  laid  oflF  or  transferred  to  other  jobs.  After  the  tests
had  been  given  came  the  process  of  computing  the  results.
In  figuring  up  these  results,  the  very  first  step  was  to
obtain  the  ranking  of  the  girls  as  shown  by  their  daily
work.  Without  such  a  ranking  of  the  comparative  abilities ­
  of  the  inspectors,  it  would  be  impossible  to  discover
whether  those  who  had  done  well  in  the  tests  were  good
workers  and  the  reverse.  The  experimenter  had,  while
conducting  the  tests,  also  kept  a  record  of  the  number  of
pounds  of  shells  inspected  by  each  girl  on  the  day  that
she  was  tested.  However,  this  record  was  not  deemed
extensive  enough  to  afford  a  reliable  criterion  of  a  girl’s
ability.  To  be  sure,  if  a  girl’s  work  on  the  day  that  she
was  taking  the  tests  was  unusually  high,  that  fact  might
show  up  in  an  unusually  good  performance  in  the  tests,
and  thus  serve  to  maintain  the  correspondence  between
the  two.  However,  the  object  of  the  tests  was  such  as  to
make  an  immediate  correspondence  a  distinctly  minor
feature.  It  was  rather  to  discover  whether  any  correspondence ­
  existed  between  the  performance  in  certain
tests  given  for  the  first  time  and  occupying  only  a  few
minutes  and  the  work  of  a  girl  over  an  extended  period
of  weeks  and  even  months.  Unless  such  a  correspondence