Job Analysis: The First Step to a Strong Certification
Job Analysis, also called Job Task Analysis or Role Delineation, is required by international standards as an essential step in developing a certification that is defensible and eligible for accreditation. Our experts can help you efficiently produce a job analysis study for your certification.
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The Methodology: Job Task Analysis
It’s not easy to develop a defensible certification exam, but the process of job analysis doesn’t require a Ph.D. in Psychometrics to understand. Here’s an overview of what to expect.
- Convene a panel of subject matter experts (SMEs), who discuss the role of the certification in the profession, and establish high-level topics (domains).
- The SME panel generates a list of job tasks that are assigned to domains; the list is reviewed for duplicates and other potential issues.
- The final list is used to generate a survey, which is sent to a representative sample of professionals that actually work in the role.
- The respondents take the survey, whereby they rate each task, usually on its importance and time spent (sometimes called criticality and frequency); demographics are also gathered.
- A psychometrician analyzes the results to determine critical and frequent tasks.
- A draft of the test blueprints is recommended. Tasks/domains with more importance and frequency should have top priority.
- The SME panel reviews and approves the blueprints.
Why do we need Job Analysis?
The core concept of assessment is validity. This is the evidence we have to support our interpretations of test scores. If our interpretation of a certain test score is that it represents someone is certified to work in a profession, the first step in that chain is defining what someone needs to know or do to be qualified in that profession. That is job analysis. A similar notion applies to pre-employment testing.
If you build a certification or licensure exam without some form of job analysis, your validity is suspect and you cannot be accredited.
How are job analysis results used to design exams?
The job analysis results are statistically analyzed to evaluate which tasks or statements are most important/frequent. These are then statistically combined into Test Blueprints. It provides a direct linkage from the test to the things actually being done on the job, providing substantial evidence for validity.
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