Question

Personnel tests are designed to test a job applicant’s cognitive and/or physical abilities. An IQ test is an example of the former; a speed test involving the arrangement of pegs on a peg board is an example of the latter (Cowling and James, The Essence of Personnel Management and Industrial Relations, 1994). A particular dexterity text is administered nationwide by a private testing service. It is known that for all tests administered last year, the distribution of scores was approximately normal with mean 75 and standard deviation 7.5. Cannot use PHstat for this problem.

1. A particular employer requires job candidates to score at least 80 on the dexterity text. Approximately what percentage of the test scores during the past year exceeded 80?

2. The testing service reported to a particular employer that one of its job candidate’s scores fell at the 98th percentile of the distribution (i.e. approximately 98% of the scores were lower than the candidate’s score and only 2% were higher). What was the candidate score?

Answer 1