ABSTRACT
One of the side effects of industrialization and political democracy has been the development of a massive effort to evaluate and predict work behavior. In the United States, work assessment has become an entrenched institution. During the early years of the movement, the advocates of mental testing apparently believed that they were in a position to create a panacea for all the problems of selection, recruitment, and promotion in both education and industry. The emphasis of the job analysis approach on the nature of the task to be performed, rather than on the human being who is to perform it, is one of its great virtues. A recent publication of the Arkansas Rehabilitation Research and Training center suggests that the development of such instruments has become something of a major industry. Criticism of vocational testing in school situations has taken a different turn from what we have seen in industry.
