Offsetting Performance Losses Due to Cheating in Unproctored Internet‐Based Testing by Increasing the Applicant Pool

Abstract

A concern about unproctored Internet‐based testing (UIT) without follow‐up verification is that because applicants are able to cheat when completing tests, test validity decreases to an unknown extent. However, this view ignores a potential advantage to UIT: Should UIT increase applicant pool size, an organization with a fixed goal in terms of the number of candidates to advance to the next stage of the hiring process can increase the cutoff score and thus be more selective. In this study, a simulation was conducted to determine if this advantage outweighs the cheating disadvantage in the prediction of job performance. When the applicant pool is increased substantially through UIT, job performance outcomes are often higher even when many applicants increase their test scores through cheating.