Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and MethodsHollingworth, Harry L. (Harry Levi)
Science
Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and Methods
Hollingworth, Harry L. (Harry Levi)
Psychophysiology
The employment of feeble-minded women as domestics, factory operatives,
laundresses, clerks, and nursemaids constitutes not only a nuisance to the
general public, but a real source of inefficiency and danger to the
community. Graded scales for the measurement of intelligence will have
amply repaid the labor devoted to their formulation if they aid us in the
proper segregation and vocational supervision of the mentally defective.
The feeble-minded boy is more likely to be observed in the natural course
of things, because of the more strictly competitive types of work into
which boys customarily go, but it is far from realized how much loss of
property, life, and general happiness is entailed upon the community by the
indiscriminate employment of untested boys and men as floating employees.
But the vocational value of the graded intelligence scales and norms is not
limited to the work of detecting and eliminating the feeble-minded. Many of
the tests as now standardized yield measures of intelligence, capacity and
comprehension ranging far above the level which constitutes the borderline
of mental defect. Some of them reach somewhat higher than the average
intelligence and capacity of the college freshman. It is thus possible,
through the use of the graded scales, to measure in quantitative terms the
general intelligence as well as various more special capacities of
applicants and candidates for positions for which general intelligence is
the chief requisite. Such tests are now used in many places in the
selection of clerical workers, telephone operators, stenographers,
waitresses, motormen, salesmen, office help, inspectors, watchmen,
soldiers, and special types of factory workers. Thus Trabue reports a study
in which Professor Scott tested thirty efficiency experts employed by a
large industrial concern in New England. Ten psychological tests were used,
including a completion test. The men were also judged on the basis of
their relative abilities by the members of the firm. The combined tests
correlated with the combined judgments, giving the very high coefficient of
.87. The completion test alone yielded a coefficient of .64. From the point
of view of vocational selection we may expect the principle of the graded
intelligence scale to become increasingly valuable as more and more norms
are established. The first definite contribution of vocational psychology
is thus not so much toward the guidance of the individual worker as for the
guidance of the employer who may be required to select from a number of
applicants those whose general intellectual equipment is most adequate. But
we shall later have occasion to point out a further contribution which this
makes possible, in so far as it may enable us to classify the operations
involved in various types of work and to align these operations and tasks
along the general intelligence scale. Such alignment will enable us to
specify the approximate degree of general intelligence which a given
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