NCJOSI^{2 TM} - National Criminal Justice Officer Selection Inventory - Integrity ^TM

The National Criminal Justice Officer Selection Inventory – Integrity (NCJOSI^{2 TM}) is the latest state-of-the-art pre-employment examination  that predicts both job performance and individual performance on post-offer assessments, thereby selecting the most qualified entry-level criminal justice and law enforcement officers. This entry-level law enforcement exam was designed with I/O Solutions' mission in mind – to provide alternative testing solutions that are robust, highly valid and reliable, while yielding the lowest possible levels of adverse impact against protected classes of individuals.

I/O Solutions was the first test provider to develop an exam that combined an assessment of cognitive ability along with a measure of personality traits in the public safety employment selection industry. Building on this idea and I/O Solutions’ mission, the NCJOSI^{2 TM} provides a testing solution that combines cognitive ability and integrity, which research has shown is the most valid combination of assessments[1] and proves extremely capable of reducing adverse impact and promoting diversity in your agency.  

At its core the NCJOSI^{2 TM} is composed of two robust measures, cognitive ability and integrity. The cognitive ability measure is an integral component in the NCJOSI^{2 TM}. We use law-enforcement-specific models of cognitive ability to help make predictions about who is going to be most successful on the job as an entry-level law enforcement officer. Through our many years of research, our model of cognitive ability has been refined and specifically tailored around the tasks that entry-level police, law enforcement, and criminal justice officers perform. By developing specifically tailored questions to measure these dimensions, we are able to more directly assess the requisite skills necessary to perform the duties of law enforcement officers in a more complete and fair way. Our development efforts have lead to a cognitive ability measure for entry-level law enforcement testing that assesses individuals more fully, producing higher levels of validity and reliability than other tools in the industry, while minimizing adverse impact based on race or gender.

The NCJOSI² is further differentiated from other tools in the marketplace due to its integration of integrity testing. Through ongoing client interactions and independent research, we noticed high attrition (or failure) rates in the polygraph and background screening employment hurdles. In order to address these high failure rates, I/O Solutions spent several years measuring the counterproductive behaviors that lead to these failures[2] and researching the use of integrity testing for police and fire departments. Our ground-breaking Integrity Inventory^TM (I^{2 TM}) was the first integrity test of its kind developed specifically for public safety use. The I^{2 TM} successfully screens out individuals likely to engage in counterproductive workplace behaviors, and when used by an agency before its post-offer screening process (e.g., polygraph exams and background checks) failure rates on these costly and time-consuming hiring components are reduced. Additional research  also demonstrates evidence that our I^{2 TM} also predicts officers’ work performance. 

After seeing the benefits of the I^{2 TM}, we decided to make integrity testing even more accessible to our public safety clients by combining the unique strengths of cognitive ability testing and integrity testing into a single exam, the NCJOSI^{2 TM} .  This results in a tool that both allows for the selection of the most qualified candidates as well as those who are most likely to pass through expensive late-stage employment hurdles such as polygraph examinations and background checks. Finally, this unique combination of measures and the design of the NCJOSI^{2 TM} allows agencies to screen out a large percentage of the applicant pool (typically 20-30 percent).  All this while drastically reducing the average test score difference between protected classes and displaying no evidence of adverse impact according to the EEOC’s 4/5th rule.  Your agency can now use the NCJOSI^{2 TM} to select the highest quality candidates and to promote diversity throughout the ranks!