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
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