Occupational psychology benefits organisations by offering solutions to personnel issues. Majority of occupational psychologists get employed in the public sector, and their work is characterised by a lot of challenges when performing psychological assessment at work. The decision of organisational psychologists depends on external factors, trends as well as workplace conditions instead of research findings. Moreover, occupational psychologists have reported limitations when working in the area of psychological analysis at the place of work due to the issues that arise when carrying out tests on employees. Problems affecting organisational psychologists have led to struggling situations when offering psychological testing of the workforce. Some of the issues that are likely to arise for industrial psychologists who work as psychological analysts are socio-cultural differences, ethical issues, changing work environment, resistance to change, and inadequate skills and knowledge. As seen in the discussion of this essay, there is a need for outlining and describing issues that arise for occupational psychologists who particularly work in the area of psychological assessment of employees at workplace.

2022-02-02
6 pages
1489 words
University/College: 
Carnegie Mellon University
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Essay
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Ethical Issues in Psychological Assessment of Workers Area

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Performing psychological assessment requires sometimes present withethical issues that affect the occupational psychologists such as instnace, the violation of the workers' confidentiality right (Wellin, 2016). A computerised method of assessing the psychological condition of the workforce increases the chances of violating ethical standards that relate to confidentiality. For instance, recording the test findings on computers that have no protection exposes privacy of workers to the public because even unauthorized people can get it, a situation that leads to the violation of the responder's confidentiality. Additionally, the issue of violated confidentiality because of automated testing may happen due to the accessibility of responder's information to computer technicians (Tarique & Schuler, 2010). Also, confidential information of the workforce saved either as hardcopy or soft copy in computers has high chances of access by the other employees in the institution.

The other ethical issue that arises for industrial psychology specialists when working in the area of psychological assessment concerns scoring errors. Wellin (2016) stated that the use of the computer might lead to the manipulation of data which causes scoring errors of the data collected. The other ethical issue is the changing of test constructs to fit the needs of the employer with less consideration of the personnel's welfare (Scott & Poteet, 2017). For example, the employer can request the psychologist to use the computer in the manipulation of data as a way of protecting the company. As a result, there are chances for less consideration of equivalence by the use of the computer to manipulate data. Moreover, computerised results can lack equivalence with manual testing leading to issues of invalidity of results. Factors like computer aversion can as well inflate scores because of computerised psychological assessment of workers (Spector & Pindek, 2016). For instance, responders who are not comfortable with computers can affect result equivalence during psychological analysis of workers. Therefore, there is likelihood for lack of construct equivalence because of the use of the computer when assessing the psychology of personnel.

The other ethical issue that arises for occupational psychologists who particularly operate in the area of employees' psychological analysis of is incompetence. Psychologists can lack knowledge or experience on how to administer and interpret psychological assessment tools, techniques or measures (Tarique & Schuler, 2010). The issue of incompetence may arise for an occupational psychologist through inadequate familiarity with the psychometric strengths, weaknesses or the intended research support of the analysis procedures. Incompetence automatically leads to inaccurate collection and interpretation of data. Moreover, competence can lead to unethical issues like reliance on computer-generated results instead of using the actual findings (Wellin, 2016). Consequently, incompetent industrial psychologists face the issue of offering incorrect data to employers.

The Issue of the Changing Context of using One Test at Workplace

Today, there is a shift towards a more positive view of psychological testing and tests at the global level. Beehr (2014) argued that the psychological tests are complex and the tester must have adequate skills and expertise to examine the workers' psychological health. For example, available psychological tests indicate complex constructs like skills, knowledge as well as psychological attributes which require complex assessment techniques (Bergman & Jean, 2016). Moreover, current psychological assessment of the workforce involves the application of a wide range of measurable areas. The assessor has to choose from the existing measurable areas of interest about the specified needs by the employer, which causes complexities in the current psychological assessment of workforce. The issue leaving out some psychological constructs due to the demands in the current testing context is likely to occur (Jex & Britt, 2014). As a result, occupational psychologists ought to meet the needs and demands of a changing place of work for quality services in the area of psychological analysis at work for quality services.

The other issue that arises when working in the area of psychological assessment that relates to a changing psychological test context in the place of work is the policies governing test instruments such as Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory among others today. According to Beehr (2014), there is the classification of psychometric measuring instruments, a situation that leads to long procedures in ensuring that testing devices have all the required psychometric properties before psychological analysis of employers. Furthermore, an issue of bias, invalidity or unreliability can arise during psychological testing due to using devices that do not meet the set psychological standards in the present context of testing in the UK (Bergman & Jean, 2016). Also, in cases when there are no classified psychometric measuring instruments, the psychologist is likely to offer biased results about the psychological condition of employers.

Also, a changing context of test used at the place of work requires skills and information on how to apply different testing equipmentsuch as Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Bhave and Glomb (2016) stated that inadequate information on how to apply some psychological testing instruments is one of the common issues probable to occur during the psychological assessment of personnel. Practitioners without knowledge of how to scientifically prove the testing device used in different contexts of the place of work will find it challenging to deliver quality services. Additionally, there is a likelihood of inequitable use of instruments because of little understanding of the application of different psychometric measuring instruments by an occupational psychologist (Bergman & Jean, 2016). For example, an organisational psychological expert lacking cautiousness or information will fail to test all psychological aspects of workers due to insufficient information on how to use some testing instruments or procedures (Beehr, 2014). Therefore, insufficient information in the use of testing devices as per the current context of the test is an issue that can arise in the area of psychological assessment.

Inadequate skills and knowledge by occupational psychologists lead to low-quality services to clients when offering the psychological analysis of personnel techniques. According to Gusso, Fink, King, Tonidandel, and Landis (2015), some occupational psychologists are not in a position to deliver quality services to companies requiring psychological assessment of human resource. Moreover, skills and knowledge that occupational psychologist have do not directly relate to the current work environment (Harrington & Lee, 2015). As a result, organisational psychologists are not in a position to deliver quality psychological assessment services when advising on human resource strategies because of inadequate knowledge and skills (Jones, Burke, & Westman, 2013). Delivery of quality services becomes a challenge which leads to low-quality psychological analysis of human resource needs of employees

The Challenge of Socio-Cultural Differences

The impact of differences in social-cultural issues usually arises for occupational psychology experts who work particularly in the psychological assessment area at the workplace. According to Lyons and Kuron (2014), the cultural differences during psychological analysis procedures also affect the effectiveness of the process. Occupational psychologists who lack information on the correct applicability of different testing devices and procedures across cultures can lead to the issue of socio-cultural conflicts. Though instruments developed to measure employees' potential and sensitivities exist, it is difficult for an occupational psychologist to suit devices in a diverse socio-cultural setting. There is also inadequate information about psychological assessment classification of different socio-cultural contexts found in the United Kingdom. As a result, the issue of socio-cultural conflicts is inevitable when assessing psychology of workers at the place of work.

Apart from conflicts due to inappropriate application of test devices as per the values of socio-cultural contexts, the other issue that arises during the psychological examination of the workforce is a language barrier. Lyons and Kuron (2014) stated that the issue of language barrier hinders the smooth delivery of psychological tests. The first cause in which language barrier issue can occur is when the employer or the psychologist is not proficient with the language used in the construction of the test. There are chances for misunderstandings and misconceptions because of constructing the test in a foreign or second language. Since language is important in the assessment of a workers' psychological analysis, the issue of communication ineffectiveness can occur because of using foreign or second language in test constructs (Youssef & Luthans, 2010). Anything that affects the conception and understanding of test construct affects the outcome. For instance, personality test in psychological assessment requires a higher level language proficiency of both the practitioner and the employees. Furthermore, the direct relationship between culture and language can leads to incorrect results when language proficiency is low. In some cases, there is the use of different construct to workers as per their language, a situation that causes non-uniformity in the testing process (Beehr, 2014). Consequently, the issue of incorrect results due the socio-cultural issue of language barrier requires consideration during psychological assessment in the place of work

Bias is as well another socio-cultural issue that arises when occupational psychologists are working in the area of psychological assessment at the place of work. As per Lyons and Kuron (2014), there are chances when industrial psychologists fail to use a similar construct to measure employees as per their socio-cultural setting. Measuring of a construct to people from different cultural backgrounds is challenging to occupational p...

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