Banding

Banding refers to the procedure of grouping test scores into ranges and treating scores within a particular range as equivalent when making personnel decisions. After an organization collects test scores from candidates who applied for a job, a hiring decision must be made using these scores. There are a number of approaches for making these decisions. One common strategy is called top-down selection: Candidate scores are ranked from highest to lowest and organizations start at the top of the list by selecting the candidate with the highest score, then move to the person with the next highest score, and so on down the list. Another common strategy is the practice of setting cutoff scores. A cutoff score involves setting a passing score where candidates at or above this score are labeled as passing the test, whereas those below are labeled as failing. With a cutoff score those passing are treated as if they performed equally on the test. Banding is an alternative to top-down and cutoff score approaches.

Banding involves creating a defined range within which candidate scores are treated as being the same. This is similar to grouping scores into grades as done in many academic settings (e.g., a score between 90% and 100% is considered an A, a score between 80% and 89% is considered a B, etc.). The concept of banding is based on the idea that small differences between test scores may not translate into meaningful differences in expected job performance. For example, a candidate who scores 94% on a test may not perform noticeably better on the job than a candidate who scores 92%. This is because tests are not perfectly predictive of job performance and have varying degrees of measurement error. Banding is the idea of taking into account this imprecision by creating ranges within which test scores are treated as being the same. Thus for candidates who have scores that fall within the same band, the difference between their scores is viewed as meaningless in terms of predicting meaningful differences in job performance, and therefore the candidates are treated as if they scored equivalently on the test.