Ethnicity effects in police officer selection: Applicant, assessor, and selection-method factors

The research reported in the present dissertation has highlighted several issues. One important issue is language as Dutch language-proficiency of applicants explained a substantial part of the score differences between the ethnic majority group and ethnic minority groups. Interestingly, assessor-applicant (dis)similarity did not differentially affect evaluations of ethnically diverse applicants. This finding alleviates concerns that discrimination of ethnic minority groups due to (dis)similarity may occur during personnel selection. However, a difference was found in the decision-making process of ethnic majority assessors judging ethnic minority applicants compared to ethnic majority applicants. This finding indicates that assessors are, in some way, affected by the ethnicity of applicants. Gaining experience in assessing ethnic minority applicants, exchanging knowledge about assessment in a multi-cultural setting among assessors, or perhaps further stand! ardizing the selection process should diminish differential effects. Furthermore, selection measures, both cognitive and non-cognitive, appear to differentially predict training performance of ethnic majority and minority trainees. A possible explanation of this differential effect may lay in the subjective evaluations of supervisors during training. Finally, scores on a newly developed situational judgment test (SJT) turned out to show substantially smaller ethnic group differences than generally are found on the cognitive ability test. These findings yield practical guidelines for personnel selection in a multi-cultural setting, such as further standardization of the decision-making process to hire or reject applicants and diminishing the influence of language skills of applicants by means of SJTs.

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