74

EMPLOYMENT  PSYCHOLOGY

It  will  be  seen  that  test  number  51  is  the  only  test  which
shows  a  significant  correlation.
In  order  to  verify  the  results  obtained  and  also  because
it  was  considered  that  not  enough  men  had  been  examined
to  make  the  results  very  reliable,  another  set  of  examinations ­
  was  given  about  six  months  later.  In  this  section
of  the  experiment  fifty-one  finished  gun  assemblers  and
twenty-six  action  assemblers  were  given  the  spatial  perception ­
  test  number  51  and  in  addition  the  Stenquist
mechanical  test  already  described.  It  had  been  hoped  that
by  this  time  it  would  be  possible  to  obtain  piece-work
records  showing  the  comparative  productiveness  of  the
various  men.  However,  although  the  men  were  on  piecework, ­
  each  man  was  limited  to  a  certain  number  of  pieces
a  day;  therefore,  it  was  again  impossible  to  obtain  production ­
  records  showing  the  comparative  ability  of  the
men.  Again  it  was  necessary  to  resort  to  the  opinion  of
the  foreman.  On  this  occasion  both  the  immediate  overseer ­
  of  the  men  and  the  foreman  were  asked  to  rank  the
men  independently  in  five  groups  according  to  their  opinion ­
  of  the  productive  ability  of  their  workers.  The  ranking ­
  of  the  men  in  the  tests  was  then  mathematically  correlated ­
  with  the  ranking  of  the  overseer  and  the  foreman
taken  separately  and  with  the  combined  ranking  of  both
men.  The  results  are  given  in  the  table  on  page  75.
It  will  be  seen  at  once  that  the  correlations  for  test  51  are
not  as  high  as  was  the  correlation  found  in  the  first  part
of  the  experiment,  though  high  enough  to  encourage
further  experiments  in  the  same  direction.  The  Stenquist
test  shows  a  slightly  higher  correlation,  although  it,  too,
is  not  high  enough  to  justify  its  use  as  a  criterion  in  the
selection  of  new  assemblers.  The  correlation  between  the
opinions  of  the  foreman  and  the  overseer  is  very  high,