In today's society, not only expertise but basic workplace skills, which are necessary for adjusting appropriately in the fast-paced environment, have been emphasized more than ever. Such basic workplace skills include effective communication skills, ...
In today's society, not only expertise but basic workplace skills, which are necessary for adjusting appropriately in the fast-paced environment, have been emphasized more than ever. Such basic workplace skills include effective communication skills, problem solving capability, self-managing capacity, work ethic, and interpersonal competency. Even though these basic workplace skills are significant, instruction and assessment on them at universities and companies still lack. Therefore, it is required to improve basic workplace skills of university students who are the potential workers in near future. In addition, companies need to examine the level of applicants' basic workplace skills objectively through investigating their interests and abilities in hiring new employees.
Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education & Training (2007) developed the test on basic workplace skills for university students, universities, and companies: For students, the test can provide them self-assessment reports to build self-development strategies through determining the extent of their own competence; for universities, it suggests possible guidelines for evaluating and improving the accomplishments to train top-level human resources; for companies, it offers practical information on overall understanding of basic workplace skills of applicants for employment.
Material which was used in this research is the test for interpersonal competency developed by Seong(2007) for sub-test of workplace skills. In most of the research about workplace skills in Korea and outside of Korea, interpersonal competency is considered as one of the basic workplace skills and it is important part of workplace skills since it contributes to achievement and build of appropriate atmosphere at work places.
Meanwhile, it is important to check whether a certain questionnaire measures what it intended to measure and it measures each question item accurately through analysis of a test while developing and completing a test. In other words, the item analysis through the method which fits best for data should be designed in the process of establishing procedures of test development. Therefore, the test for interpersonal competency should contain a process to verify its quality factor as well.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the suitability of the test of interpersonal competency by applying Generalized Partial Credit Model of Polytomous Item Response Theory and provide suggestions to make the test the higher quality one. The data I used for analysis in the study was the answers of 16,283 participants from the inquiry on the test of interpersonal competency by the Career Net (http://www.careernet.re.kr/) in 2008 and 2009. The test for interpersonal competency is organized in five categories, which are emotional bonds, collaboration, mediation, leadership, and understanding of organization. It consists of 55 items, 10∼12 items for each category, and all items used a five-point rating scale. The test information function was calculated the formula which was proposed by Donoghue(1994) and the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 18.0 was used for analysing the data: Correlation coefficient between sub-categories for validity; factor analysis; calculation of Cronbach for estimation of reliability. In addition, the item discrimination, the item difficulty, and the item step parameter of the Generalized Partial Credit Model were also calculated by the PARSCALE program.
Findings are as follows. First, the validity of the test on interpersonal competency showed high correlation with each sub-category and it means that the test is calculating the interpersonal competency appropriately. However, the several items which calculate other sub-categories as well were found, so such items need further examination for increasing validity of the test.
Second, the test on interpersonal competency was analyzed as very reliable test as the validity of the test on interpersonal competency and the sub-categories were high with .969 and .869~.928 for each. Additionally, according to test information function, interpersonal competency is more reliable at theta levers -2∼0 than at extremes theta levels in all parts of test.
Third, a review of the item parameter by the Generalized Partial Credit Model revealed that the item discrimination is mostly high, but several items were found as low item discrimination, so that they are in need of revision and the item difficulty was on average or a little easy. In addition, the item step parameter was categorized in 3 attributes: The items which have regular distant of the step parameter or which have shown increase in the distant of the step parameter according to categories were appropriate items for estimating interpersonal competency. And the items which have the lowest step parameter at certain category are analyzed to item which have lower item discrimination.
As a result, the results on finding which items are assess subjects' interpersonal competency better and the differences of participants' responses between items were investigated when the validity and reliability were investigated and the item analysis with the Generalized Partial Credit Model was conducted. It was also revealed that several items of the test on interpersonal competency were in need of revision in order to be used as more effective assessment. Therefore, it is necessary to pursue continuous validation applied by various analysis methods fit for the characteristic of the test for quality assurance of the assessment tools.
According to results of this research, for validation of test and achievement of purpose of test development, test should be enforced more widely. In addition, for not only test for interpersonal competency is used by students but also is used companies which want to employ talent, researches that find what is tailored sub-categories for each company is needed. So that according to results of the researches, if tailored test for each company is developed, utilization of test will able to increase at companies.