PSYC105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Suicidal Ideation, Undergraduate Medicine And Health Sciences Admission Test, Cardiovascular Disease
1 Jun 2018
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Organisational Psychology – Week 8
• What is organizational psychology?
o The science of people at work
▪ It is applying the theories and practice of psychology to
the workplace
o Organisational psychologists specialize in
▪ Analysing organizations and their people
▪ Devising strategies to recruit, motivate, develop, change
and inspire
• Why is it important?
o Employment/being at work is a widespread activity
▪ Of those who want/need a job, over 95% have one
o Work can result in:
▪ Significant benefits for an individual e.g. satisfaction,
wellbeing, vigor, health, wealth
▪ Significant problems for an individual e.g. depression,
stress, illhealth, poor work/life balance
▪ Significant benefits for an organization/society
o Organisational psych is relevant from school leaver to retiree
• Being an Org Psych → research and practice utilize a wide cross-
section of basic psychology
Case Study 1 – High Stakes Selection:
• Task = new medical school needed help to develop an interview process for
selecting medical students
• Employee selection:
o Evidence-based → using psychology research and practice to develop
a process that will help organisations identify and choose those who
will be the best employees of the future
o High stakes → when there are important consequences for the
applicant and/or for the organization
• Selecting medical students:
o High stakes context =
▪ High demand → 3000 applicants for 100 places at UWS
▪ High cost → emotional cost for applicants/students, cost of
training, physical/health cost for future patients and healthcare
system
▪ High scrutiny and stakeholder interest → applicants, medical
fraternity, general publics, politicians, media
o Media spotlight =
▪ Media is interested in selection of medical students
▪ Paper on ‘entry tests for graduate medical programs: is it time
to re-think?’
▪ That week, front page news items e.g. The Australian “Review
urged of doctors’ selection”
• Psychologists and selection
o You need to understand what qualities, knowledge and skills are
important for good job performance e.g. conscientiousness
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find more resources at oneclass.com
o Need to know how to analyse a job to determine the specific skills
required
o Need to know how to use psychometric testing to assess whether (or
not) applicants have the necessary qualities
▪ Understand the advantages/disadvantages of psychometric
testing .e.g. validity and reliability
o Know how to design other methods e.g. interviews, to make the
selection a fair process
• Criterion-related validity:
o Do results on the tests predict a future outcome?
▪ Future outcome = criterion/dependent variable
o In workplaces, the criterion is often job performance
▪ Medical doctors’ job performance includes:
• Correct diagnosis and treatment
• Good communication
• Caring and empathy
• Effective teamwork
• Applicants for medical school:
o We need to identify people who have certain cognitive AND non
cognitive skills
▪ HSC marks and UMAT predict likely performance in cognitive
outcomes (diagnosis, correct treatment)
▪ Interviews predict likely performance of non cognitive
outcomes (empathy, communication)
▪ E.g. these all needed for performing well as a doctor
• Developing interivews:
o Task involves –
▪ Identifying most important qualities to assess
▪ Writing interview questions
▪ Training interviewers
▪ Evaluating results
o Example interview –
▪ Show DVD
▪ Ask questions
• Issues to consider:
o Adverse impact → do disadvantaged applicants perform more poorly?
o Test security → what if some applicants know about the questions
beforehand?
o Interviewer bias → do some interviewers rate more leniently than
others?
o Coaching → can applicants be coached to perform well?
Case Study 2 – Accident Prevention:
• Task = following an accident in Alice Springs, investigate the workload
associated with specific approaches to landing
• Information processing: stimuli (short term memory store), pattern recognition
(long term memory), decision and response selection (working memory),
response execution, response
• Human error:
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
