Biographical Data

Item Attributes

An outline of 10 major attributes of biodata items was proposed by F. A. Mael and is as follows:

• 1.
  Historical versus hypothetical (past behaviors versus predicted behaviors in the future, or behaviors in what-if scenarios)
• 2.
  External versus internal (behaviors versus attitudes)
• 3.
  Objective versus subjective (observable or countable events versus self-perceptions)
• 4.
  Firsthand versus secondhand (self-descriptions versus how people would say others describe them)
• 5.
  Discrete versus summative (single events versus averaging over a period of time)
• 6.
  Verifiable versus nonverifiable
• 7.
  Controllable versus noncontrollable (circumstances that could or could not be influenced by a decision)
• 8.
  Equal access versus unequal access (access to opportunities with respect to the group being tested)
• 9.
  Job relevant versus nonjob relevant
• 10.
  Noninvasive versus invasive

Scoring Methods

Historically, biodata measures have developed out of a tradition of strong empiricism, and therefore a wide variety of scoring methods have been proposed. The criterion-keying approach involves taking individuals' responses to a given biodata item and calculating the mean criterion score or the criterion-related validity for each response option. This is done for each item, and these values are used as item response weights for scoring purposes. Weights may be rationally adjusted when nonlinear patterns in relatively continuous response options are found or when some weights are based on small sample sizes. A similar approach to criterion keying can be taken when keying biodata items not to criteria but rather to personality or [Page 57]temperament measures. This is a particularly interesting approach in keying a set of objective or verifiable biodata items, which tend to be less susceptible to faking but often are harder to assign to single psychological constructs. (Even if such keying is not done, it remains helpful to place the biodata measure within a nomological net of cognitive and noncognitive constructs.) When biodata items can be assigned to constructs in a relatively straightforward manner, such as by developing item content around constructs or through an a priori or post hoc subject matter expert (SME) item-sorting procedure, a straightforward scoring of each item along a single underlying continuum may be possible as is done with traditional Likert-scale self-report measures of personality.

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