ABSTRACT
Tide VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq., has been interpreted by the courts as requiring that procedures used to make decisions about the hiring and promotion of employees must either: (a) have no adverse impact against legally protected groups or (b) be job-related and consistent with business necessity (e.g., Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 1971). Selection professionals and courts frequently define the latter requirement as demanding that selection procedures having adverse impact be valid. In fact, demonstrated validity has been held to satisfy both prongs of the requirement—a valid selection process is considered to be both job-related and consistent with business necessity (e.g., Hamer v. City of Atlanta, 1989). This chapter discusses legal requirements and the litigation process as they affect the work of those involved in developing content valid selection procedures. We note that there are other methods for assessing validity. As stated in chapter 13, criterion-related validity is based on the degree of empirical relationship between predictor scores and criterion scores and construct validity is based on an integration of evidence that supports the interpretation or meaning of predictor scores. Both of these methods for assessing validity involve highly technical and sophisticated statistical issues, some of which are briefly described in chapter 13, and many of which are beyond the scope of this chapter.
