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Behavioral Interview History
The concept of Behavior Description Interviewing has
been developing for over 80 years.
Structure
Alfred Binet, in 1919, used interviews to assess the intelligence
of five children. The three teachers who interviewed the children
were confident with their assessments; their assessments, however,
were contradictory. H. L. Hollingsworth, in 1922, studied the rankings
given in interviews to applicants applying for positions in the
Army. Several officers interviewed the same applicants; once again,
not many of the officers gave the applicants similar rankings. One
applicant, for example, was given the top ranking by one officer
and a ranking of 57 by another.
The need for more accuracy was clear. In attempts to increase interview
validity
(accuracy), researchers began to study the value of adding structure
to an interview. In these studies, each candidate was asked the
same questions. One study reported a validity co-efficiency of .68
for job performance ratings and .43 for the amount of time a person
would stay with the company. A second revealed .61 for the length
of time employees stayed. Another study showed a .71 correlation
between the ratings given in structured interviews and supervisor
on-the-job ratings.
The value of structure was confirmed in these studies as well as
later ones. In addition, researchers began looking for other ways
to increase interview validity.
Understanding of the job requirements
One extensive study examined the relevancy of favorable and unfavorable
characteristics of the applicant. Managers were asked to evaluate
several hypothetical applicants, half of whom were given a complete
job description while the other half were given no job description
at all. Managers who were given complete job descriptions were less
influenced by irrelevant details than those working without job
descriptions.
Interview Questions
In 1965, J. B. Mass asked interviewers familiar with the characteristics
of top performers to list behavior-based examples of low, medium
and high performers. Another set of interviewers was given these
examples and sorted them in the same categories without knowing
how the other interviewers had grouped them. These examples were
then used in rating applicants responses. Two studies reported .58
and .69 correlations, respectively.
In two studies done in 1980 headed by Latham, Saari, Pursell and
Campion, interviewers used questions developed from critical
incidents that asked candidates how they would perform in a
specific situation. Interviewers were also given instruction on
how to rate the candidates answers. The reliability scores of these
studies were .71 and .67, and the correlations with job performance
measures were .46 and .60. This type of interviewing became known
as situational interviewing.
Behavioral Interview
Upon review of these studies, Tom Janz took elements of the
situational interview and developed a new type of interviewing:
Behavioral Interviewing. Both situational interviewing
and Behavior Description Interviewing (BDI) base their questions
on critical incidents, but the difference lies in the type
of questions asked. Situational interviewing focuses on what
applicants would do in a specific situation, whereas BDI asks
applicants to relate what they did do in a specific situation,
that is, BDI focuses on actual behavior. Janz created the
phrase, “The best predictor of future performance is
past performance in similar circumstances”, which is
now associated with behavior-based assessment throughout the
world.
In 1982, Janz compared traditional, unstructured interviews
to Behavior Description Interviews in a study of teaching
assistants (Tas). One group of eight senior business students
was trained in traditional interviewing techniques, and another
group of eight students learned how to give Behavior Description
Interviews. Fifteen Tas were interviewed and rated four times,
twice using the traditional method and twice using BDI; the
criterion for the study was the ratings the Tas received at
the end of the semester by students. Forty-five of the 60
interviews were properly recorded and then analyzed. There
was better agreement between those ratings produced in traditional
interviews (.71 vs. .46), but the BDI ratings were significantly
more accurate (.54 vs. .08) in predicting TA performance ratings.
Three years later, Christopher Orpen performed a similar
study involving life insurance sales. Each of the interviewers
were given the same amount of training and similar opportunities
to practice their skills after being randomly assigned to
either BDI training or traditional, unstructured interview
training. The two criteria of the study were the dollar value
of policies sold and supervisor’s ratings. Upon conclusion
of the study, Orpen reported a validity for the supervisors’
ratings of .56 for BDI and .08 for traditional, unstructured
interviews. The interview validity (the average of two interview
ratings) of the sales value was .72 for BDI and .10 for traditional,
unstructured interviews.
Studies continue to confirm the validity of assessing actual
behavior through Behavior Description Interviewing. No other
interviewing method has proven to be as accurate in determining
performance effectiveness.
Information gathered from Behavior Description Interviewing:
New, Accurate, Cost Effective by Tom Janz, Lowell Hellervik
and David C. Gilmore (1986) and The Employment Interview:
Theory, Research, and Practice, edited by Robert W. Eder
and Gerald R. Ferris (1989). |
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Studies continue to confirm the validity of assessing
actual behavior through Behavior Description Interviewing. No other
interviewing method has proven to be as accurate in determining
performance effectiveness.
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