HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF PRE-EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING AND PERFORMANCE PREDICTION IN LAW ENFORCEMENT: A NARRATIVE REVIEW

Abstract

The recruitment of law enforcement officers through psychological assessments aims to identify suitable candidates for the profession. Looking into the demanding jobs, the pre-employment psychological testing is considered a performance prediction and identification of less suitable candidates in law enforcement. The present narrative review includes the historical timeline to the contemporary research findings on the pre-employment psychological testing in law enforcement, focusing on the performance prediction and suggested interventions. The methods in the narrative review include the published research articles only in the English language from the databases of Google Scholar, PubMed, and PsycINFO. The keywords used on the search engines were “police AND psychological screening,” “pre-employment psychological testing AND police,” and “law enforcement AND psychological assessment.” The findings present in the study show the evidence of intelligence testing from the early 1900s to the projective test till mid-1900, from the mid-1900s to late 1900, the evidence included the formalisation of guidelines and establishment of validity of the tests. The validity studies showed mixed predictive validity of pre-employment psychological testing, and the evidence was limited. Therefore, the recent psychological research trend has taken a shift to more dynamic assessment: occupational stress, resilience, stress tolerance capacity, and emotional intelligence, and associated interventions to improve these parameters, that has statistically significant correlation with better performance in law enforcement. The present narrative review concludes that the pre-employment testing in law enforcement is a well-established concept, although the reliability, validity, and significant performance prediction through only personality assessment were limited. Hence, the dynamic job-related assessment needs to be prioritized with the periodical wellness programs for law enforcement officers.