ABSTRACT
Biodata can be most readily differentiated in terms of content classifications, and by the format in which they are presented. Three well known distinctions are: biodata versus personality data; hard versus soft biodata; and biodata versus background investigations. Personal history information such as age, years of education, previous occupations, and marital status represent important aspects of a person's total background and should be useful in selection. The major assumption is that how one will behave in the future is best predicted by how one has behaved in the past or by characteristics associated with past behaviour. The rational approaches have generally relied upon the theoretical interpretability of internal variance analyses. Rational approaches attempt to quantify composites of items that measure an interpretable set of constructs. Until the mid-1970s, the most popular method for developing a biographical inventory was through a strictly empirical approach.
