[IPAC-List] differential validity? Fake Degrees

[Patrick McCoy]

If I remember correctly, it has been estimated that approximately 25
percent of resumés contain serious distortion.   I believe that figure
comes from Mike Aamodt

Aamodt, M. (2003). How common is resumé fraud? Assessment Council News,
February, p.6-7.

Patrick McCoy, Ph.D.
Ottawa, Canada


>>> "Mark Hammer" <Mark.Hammer at psc-cfp.gc.ca> 19/03/2009 9:03 am >>>

Good point Dennis.

I don't know if I'd label it a "problem" as such, but in an era where
more and more initial screening is being turned over to machines and
other superficial filters, there is certainly *concern* over the
validity of claimed educational credentials.  As for data, I seem to
recall hearing something once about some percentage of falsely claimed
degrees, but I don't remember either the number or the source, so I'll
stay mute on the topic.  

I will only add that when it comes to e-mail spam, I'm having a
difficult time choosing whether I want to spend my money on Nigerian
bureaucrats, cheap "potency" drugs, or purchasable degrees that will
supposedly expedite my career movement.  They all seem to ring my
doorbell on a regular basis.  I tell you, Dennis, between longer
erections, shorter Ph.D.s, and kindness to fellow public servants in
developing nations around the world, I'm frozen at the choice-point!

Mark


>>> "Dennis Doverspike " <dd1 at uakron.edu> 2009/03/18 10:31 pm >>>


And sometimes an education is not an education at all.

A couple of years ago there was a GAO report on the number of fake
degrees
among high ranking executives in the federal government. I do not know
if
any further reports were ever released or if there was any final
reporting
of data. 

Does anyone have any current information on the prevelance of fake
degrees?

Anyway, for Mark, I was wondering if this was a problem in Canada as
well
and if there was any data? 

Dennis Doverspike, Ph.D., ABPP
Professor of Psychology
Director, Center for Organizational Research
Senior Fellow of the Institute for Life-Span Development and
Gerontology
Psychology Department
University of Akron
Akron, Ohio  44325-4301
330-972-8372 (Office)
330-972-5174 (Office Fax)
ddoverspike at uakron.edu 

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-----Original Message-----
From: ipac-list-bounces at ipacweb.org
[mailto:ipac-list-bounces at ipacweb.org] 
On Behalf Of Mark Hammer
Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2009 4:38 PM
To: IPAC-List at ipacweb.org 
Subject: Re: [IPAC-List] differential validity?

I guess I didn't convey it right the first time.

Education is:
1) An accomplishment
2) A qualification
3) A marker of socio-cognitive attributes
4) A marker of socio-historical factors (not quite as many folks in
their
80's with Masters degrees even though they've had more time to get one
than
30 year-olds)
5) A marker of cultural factors (compare post-secondary rates in Angola
vs
France)
6) A marker of access routes and all demographic and socio-economic
factors
leafing to access

If it was ONLY a marker of socio-cognitive attributes (and I'm one of
those
fools who thinks of intelligence as intrinsically social), and an
accomplishment, then there should be no differential validity.  The
trouble
is that education is all of those other things too, such that it CAN
be
telling a very different story about identifiable group A vs B.

Case in point:  Some 20 years ago, working on my doctoral research in
adult
cognition, I sat back for a moment and realized that proper matching of
my
senior/retiree group and college group for education would involve much
more
than simply saying that the 20-30 year-olds had 18.3 yrs of education
and
the 60-80 year-olds had 18.7 (or whatever it was).  After all, just
exactly
how many young women in the 1930's went to university and completed not
one
but two degrees?  Heck, how many folks in general went that far?  So,
I
figured I'd get some census data for the two birth cohorts, construct
a
regression slope, and calculate how similar or different each age group
was
from the other based on the residualized education scores.  In other
words,
how much closer to the *typical attainment* for their birth cohort was
group
A than group B?  If they both reflected their birth cohort
equivalently,
then they were "matched" on education.

Unfortunately, the analysis never came to fruition.  The data provided
me by
Statistics Canada was simply not optimized for the analysis I wished to
do
(you would think they could have anticipated my needs in 1906! 
Harumph!!).
Then there was the small matter of WWII during which data collection on
men
was poor because they were often somewhere else, and immediately after
which
the national average was altered by the huge influx of immigrants from
Europe.  But then that's pretty much the exception that illustrates
the
rule, isn't it?  People *get* education and are *able* to get education
for
different reasons.  I'm pretty confident that educational attainment
within
demographic group predicts the way you think it ought to, because of
#3
above, but I am equally confident that the same attainment can easily
mean
something different at time A or for group A than it does at time B or
for
group B.

Mark Hammer
Ottawa
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