Guest and Zijstra's study on evidence-based organizational psychology research

¶ … organizational/industrial psychology. The author endeavored to find such an article and found one by Guest and Zijstra. The article pertains to the academic perceptions of research evidence that exist when it comes to work and organizational psychology. The study was executed in 2012 by the aforementioned authors. The facets of the study that will be covered include the purpose of the experiment, the methods that were used, the statistical analyses that were utilized and a summary of the results and discussion of the study. The author of this report will also offer a personal perspective about what shall be reviewed in this study.

Purpose of the Experiment

As mostly noted in the introduction, the purpose of the study or experiment is to measure and quantify the perceptions about the academic and scholarly research that is involved and present when it comes to work on organizational psychology. They study's introduction and hypothesis section notes that fields like medicine and so forth are all about evidence-based practice and that the use of this principle has served that and similar fields well. People in the sociology and psychology field have tried to copy that to organizational psychology but with mixed results. The primarily cited reason for this stems from the fact that sociological concerns and studies are much different than more conventional medical ones. Even with that being the case, it is deemed that psychology in particular is probably the best sociological paradigm when it comes to staying true to the just-mentioned evidence-based practice and similar facets of scholarly study. The commonly cited reason for this good performance with psychology is that it has a strong base of positivism and thus helps follow the required medical model (Guest & Zijlstra, 2012).

Experimental Hypotheses

The study's authors look at a total of ten different ideas and hypotheses but they whittle it down to six in particular. Those six assertions and hypotheses are as follows:

The general mental ability is the strongest (or at least one of the strongest) predictors of performance in an organization.

The setting of goals and the providing of feedback is absolutely and highly effective as a motivational methodology when practiced in an organization.

Human resources practices are a key part of defining and meeting organizational outcomes.

When doing interviews, structured ones are better-performing than unstructured ones.

Selection practices need to be valid and are very important when it comes to measuring and summarizing performance outcomes

Personality and performance are absolutely related (Guest & Zijlstra, 2012).

Results

For the first round, there were three levels of responses. Those levels were specific propositions/assertions, reference to a category without specifics and general statements. Most of the responses overall could be placed into specific categories and typologies. The selected statements from group I were measured in terms of the consensus, or lack thereof, that was found when those same statements were posed in the second round of questions. Anything above seventy-five percent was considered a "strong consensus." Of the questions given in the second round, only a few questions got values of "strongly agree." The best performing question was "participation in decisions improves commitment to decisions," which had a "strongly agree" rating of sixty percent.

Discussion & Conclusion

The discussion for the study notes that while evidence-based practice is just one facet of scholarly research as it pertains to organizational psychology. However, it is the most important one of the group, or at least one of the most important. There are levels of consensus when it comes to the questions in this study but they are moderate at best. The conclusion notes that evidence-based practice is a primary focus of similar research but the overall body of said research is a little thin.

Conclusion

The author of this report sees precisely how medical evidence-based practice can differ in terms of efficacy and performance as compared to purely sociological endeavors like psychology and the like. Indeed, getting complete and incontrovertible evidence on the latter is much more fleeting and difficult than measuring something like how many people contract a disease with versus without treatment. Even so, this does not mean that evidence-based foci cannot work in an organizational psychology context. Indeed, it can and this has been proven over the years.