Organisations that use assessments to make talent decisions trust those assessments will provide helpful insights about people without unfairly discriminating against demographic groups. Equal employment opportunity for all is one of Hogan’s foundational values, and we are committed to ongoing reviews of our assessments’ fairness. For many years, we have demonstrated the fairness of our assessments across age groups, genders, races, and ethnicities. Now, we have the data to show fairness across sexual orientations as well.
Collecting Data for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that sexual orientation would be included as a protected class under the umbrella of sex in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964; Bostock v. Clayton, 2020). After this ruling, Hogan added voluntary demographic questions that asked participants their sexual orientation and gender identity so we could ensure the fairness of our assessments for LGBT+ people.
After nearly two years of data collection, we have sufficient data to provide evidence of equivalence (i.e., fairness) for our assessments for bisexual, gay, and lesbian sexual orientations. Although we currently do not have enough data to analyse for transgender individuals, we are committed to evaluating our assessments’ fairness for this group as soon as we do.
Demonstrating Assessment Fairness Across Sexual Orientations
We analysed data from 1,055, 1,275, and 549 individuals who took the Hogan assessments and identified as bisexual, gay, or lesbian respectively. We examined test fairness by conducting differential test functioning analyses. Differential test functioning occurs when a scale behaves differently for different groups of people, even for people with the same level of a given personality characteristic. Differential test functioning is concerning because it can lead to systematic test score differences due to demographic group membership rather than personality (or values or cognitive ability).
Our assessments showed little evidence of differential test functioning due to sexual orientation, with test score differences of less than 1% on average. Similar to the results we see across age groups, genders, and racial and ethnic groups, these results indicate scales on the Hogan Personality Inventory, Hogan Developmental Survey, and the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory are fair across sexual orientations.
For specific questions, or to learn more, contact your PBC consultant.
*This post was originally published on Hogan Assessments
About Peter Berry Consultancy (PBC)
PBC is a multidisciplinary global consulting firm with 30 years’ experience in the delivery of solutions aimed at maximising the potential of individuals, teams, leaders and organisations. We undertake research to support our evidence-based solutions and have a network of partners and distributors globally.
PBC is the Australian and New Zealand distributor of Hogan Assessments and the authors of a range of diagnostics including the Hogan 360 suite, Agile suite, High Performing Team Assessment (HPTA), and co-authored the Hogan Safety Climate Survey.
