Examining the Test: an Evaluation of the Police Standard Entrance Test. INSTITUTION Scottish Council for Research in Education
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 415 249 TM 027 914 AUTHOR Wilson, Valerie; Glissov, Peter; Somekh, Bridget TITLE Examining the Test: An Evaluation of the Police Standard Entrance Test. INSTITUTION Scottish Council for Research in Education. SPONS AGENCY Scottish Office Education and Industry Dept., Edinburgh. ISBN ISBN-0-7480-5554-1 ISSN ISSN-0950-2254 PUB DATE 1996-00-00 NOTE 104p. AVAILABLE FROM HMSO Bookshop, 71 Lothian Road, Edinburgh, EH3 9AZ; Scotland, United Kingdom (5 British pounds). PUB TYPE Reports Evaluative (142) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC05 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Employment Qualifications; Foreign Countries; Job Skills; Minority Groups; *Occupational Tests; *Police; Test Bias; *Test Interpretation; Test Use; *Testing Problems IDENTIFIERS *Scotland ABSTRACT In June 1995, the Scottish Council for Research in Education began a 5-month study of the Standard Entrance Examination (SET) to the police in Scotland. The first phase was an analysis of existing recruitment and selection statistics from the eight Scottish police forces. Phase Two was a study of two police forces using a case study methodology: Identified issues were then circulated using the Delphi approach to all eight forces. There was a consensus that both society and the police are changing, and that disparate functional maps of a police officer's job have been developed. It was generally recognized that recruitment and selection are important, but time-consuming, aspects of police activity. Wide variations were found in practices across the eight forces, including the use of differential pass marks for the SET. Independent assessors have identified anomalies in the test indicating that it is both ambiguous and outdated in part, with differences in the readability of different versions that compromises comparability.
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