Pre-congress workshops

Workshops for practitioners and / or researchers will be organised on Wednesday May 9 2007. The general aim is to offer a half-day focused, interactive education session within a given topic of high relevance and with a current interest. 

Please note that the condition for a workshop to be given is that a minimum number of 20 participants must register for the workshop. Cost for participation is SEK 1.100 exkl 25% VAT for a three hour workshop. 

Deadline for workshop registration is March 9.
A minimum of 20 registered participants is required before this date, otherwise the workshop has to be cancelled


Workshop 1   09.00 - 12.00
"Measuring and Improving Organizational Productivity"
Robert Pritchard, USA

Description
The workshop will focus on measuring and improving organizational productivity. The workshop leader will first give a brief overview of one technique, the Productivity Measurement and Enhancement System (ProMES). ProMES was designed by the workshop leader to be a practical method of measuring organizational productivity, and to use these productivity measures as feedback to help people improve their productivity. The goal was to make these improvements in such a way that everyone benefited, including the people doing the work. Workshop participants will be asked to have read one article describing ProMES which will be provided in advance by the workshop leader. This article explains the steps in doing ProMES and the results from using it in organizations around the world. These results indicate that 1) the system generally results in large increases in productivity which last over long periods of time, 2) it can be used in many different types of organizations with people at all levels of the organization, 3) the system is highly cost effective to use, and 4) attitudes and stress improve under the system. Reading this article in advance will allow the focus of the actual workshop on practical issues in doing the intervention. Specifically, the workshop will simulate the steps in doing ProMES using the workshop participants as members of the design team. The focus will be on the practical issues that a ProMES facilitator must deal with in actual projects.This information is based on over 20 years of using the technique.Potential participants can get more information about ProMES from: http://www.psych.ucf.edu/promes/, the ProMES web site.

Workshop 2    09.00 - 12.00
"I-DEALS: Idiosyncratic Deals Workers Bargain for Themselves challenges"
Denise Rousseau, USA

I-DEALS: Idiosyncratic Deals Workers Bargain for Themselves challenges traditional notions that standardization is the only way to create workplace justice. Employees, especially those with valuable skills, can make their jobs, pay, perks and career opportunities different from their co-workers. These idiosyncratic arrangements can be a valuable source of flexibility and personal satisfaction-but can also create inequity and resentment among colleagues. How idiosyncrasy can be made fair, where differential treatment is acceptable to co-workers and beneficial to the employer, will be the focus of discussion in this workshop


Workshop 3   09.00 - 12.00
"Managing Job Stress, Burnout and Engagement"
Wilmar Schaufeli,Utrecht University,The Netherlands

The aim of the workshop is to increase participants' knowledge of job stress, burnout and work engagement, to make them aware of antecedents and consequences, and to help them identify and plan interventions to manage burnout and build engagement in organisations. More specifically, using and evidence-based model, four issues will be addressed:
. The work situation, including its demands and resources and their balance;
. Person factors, including the ways of coping with job stress;
. Situational factors, including life events and work-home interference;
. Burnout and engagement as negative and positive outcomes, respectively.
Each of these four issues will be illustrated with empirical results from recent investigations and participants are invited to identify factors in their own work situation that may contribute to their levels of job stress or - contrarily - to wellness at work. Also, levels of burnout and engagement of the participants are assessed using validated questionnaires.
Finally, an overview is presented of interventions to prevent burnout and promote engagement in organizations.



Workshop 4   13.00 - 16.00
"Ask the researchers about leadership"
Claes Wallenius, Sweden

This workshop will be a forum for leadership discussion. The panel will consist of prominent Swedish leadership researchers from different sectors, including representatives from the national defense sector as well as the financial and health sectors. The participants will have the opportunity to address questions to the panel about the various discussion topics.
The first topic will concern the scientific aspects of leadership. The discussion will focus on questions surrounding the state of leadership research today. As is the case in many social sciences, researchers have left us with a number of models, and there is little consensus as to which one to use. The models focus mainly on leader traits, on leader styles, on situational aspects, and on the relationship between leaders and followers.
The second topic will concern the practical implications of leadership research. Many of those who practice leadership are interested in research that offers reliable answers to the "how to" questions. A related aspect concerns the criteria for quality leadership in the different models. Is it possible to define "good" or "bad" leadership on a general level or is it situation specific? It is important that we discuss the actual leadership advice that can be derived from the different models, which could help provide direction for those in leading positions, those who select and train leaders, and those who will be led.


Workshop 5    13.00 - 16.00
"International developments in the field of test quality and test user standards and guidelines"
Dave Bartram, UK

The workshop will focus on the work carried out under the auspices of EFPA on developing common standards for test review procedures and the on standards for test use. The latter work, carried out jointly with EAWOP, will form the main focus of the workshop. In order to provide a context for this, we the work of the International Test Commission will also be reviewed, especially with regards to the guidelines on test adaptation, on test use and on computer-based and internet-delivered testing. An update on other international developments will be provide, in particular the progress of the ISO (International Standards Organization) project to consider standards for psychological assessment.
The timing of the workshop is ideal in that it will coincide with the time at which the EAWOP-EFPA Steering Group for the test user standards project will be reporting to the EAWOP General Assembly. As part of this project, data has been collected on test user qualifications requirements from a number of European countries.
The format of the workshop will consist of both briefing sessions and opportunities for delegates to provide input to these various projects, rather than just be told about them. In particular, I will be keen to collect delegate's views on how and in what directions EFPA should progress these various projects in the future, both on its own and in collaboration with EAWOP, IAAP, ITC and ISO.


Workshop 6  13.00 - 16.00
"Course in multilevel analysis for grouped and longitudinal data"
Joop Hox, Utrecht University

Social research often concerns relationships between individuals and the social contexts to which they belong. Individuals and their social contexts can be conceptualized as a hierarchical structure, with individuals nested within groups. Classical examples are organizational research, with individuals nested within organizational units, and cross-national research, with individuals nested within their national units. Such systems can be observed at two levels, and as a result we have data with group level variables and individual level variables. To analyze such hierarchical structures, we need multilevel modeling, which allows us to study the relationships between variables observed at different levels in the hierarchical structure. Multilevel modeling can also be used to analyze data from longitudinal research, by viewing measurement occasions as being nested within respondents. This has several advantages compared to more classical approaches to longitudinal data.
This short course is intended as a basic and nontechnical introduction to multilevel analysis. It starts with a description of some examples, and shows why multilevel models are necessary if the data have a hierarchical structure. It then covers the basic theory of two- and three-level models. Next it explains how multilevel models can be applied to analyzing longitudinal data, and why and when this may be an attractive analysis approach, as compared to more classical analysis methods such as multivariate analysis of variance (Manova). Examples shall be given on how to conduct these analyses using the SPSS Mixed procedure, which is available in SPSS starting with version 11.5. The course assumes reasonable familiarity with analysis of variance and multiple regression analysis, but prior knowledge of multilevel modeling is not assumed.

The course is based on: J.J. Hox (2002). Multilevel Analysis. Techniques and Applications. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. The course pack includes selected chapters from this text, a brief 'how to' guide to SPSS Mixed, and handouts from the PowerPoint slides.

Workshop 7  13.00 - 16.00
"Personnel selection: New methods for analysis and design"
Prof.dr. Robert A. Roe, Universiteit Maastricht

Personnel selection is one of the key activities of W&O psychologists all around the world. Much has been written about how to develop test batteries for selection, and many studies have examined the psychometric properties of selection tests. However, this literature is limited scope and addresses only a small part of the problems faced by psychologists involved in developing selection systems. The aim of this workshop is to offer participants a broader perspective on personnel selection (that includes e.g. political, economic, and managerial aspects), to give a complete overview of the process of redesigning an existing selection system (or designing a new one), to discuss critical issues in the design process, and to present a variety of techniques that are helpful in dealing with these issues. Some keywords are: stakeholder analysis, design cycle, program of requirements, competence analysis, trajectory analysis, flow analysis, prediction models, selection stages and batches, compensation and cutoffs.
Participants in this workshop will, first of all, learn how to analyze selection situations from a number of perspectives. One is an organizational perspective that looks at the stakeholders of selection, vested interests, power games, and possibilities for change. Another is a psychological perspective that looks at performance (deficits), the various factors contributing to it, and possibilities for improvement by selection compared to other interventions. Next, there is a purely numerical perspective that looks at numbers of candidates and positions, and at possibilities for reaching targets on the basis of known validities and statistical considerations. Participants will be made familiar with the notion of designing a selection system in a stepwise but iterative process. They will learn to focus on the system's architecture and to take critical decisions before elaborating psychometric and practical details.