ABSTRACT
Job analysis is the process of collecting, organizing, analyzing and documenting information about work. Because job analysis is a largely descriptive process, different approaches to job analysis are not so much in contention with each other as they are focusing on different aspects of the same problem. The field of job analysis is especially important because it is the precursor to many other areas of industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology. Job analysis often serves as a first step that cannot be ignored even though the investigator’s primary interests may be in other areas of I-O psychology. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an understanding of a history of job analysis by reviewing previous histories, establishing a context for the development of the field, organizing the various approaches to job analysis into a series of schools of thought, and looking back over the last 100 years to come to a series of conclusions about the field.
