The Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Civil Service Commission, Department of Labor, & Department of Justice, 1978) were published for the purpose of "establishing a uniform federal position in the area of prohibiting discrimination in employment practices on the grounds of race, color, religion or national origin" (p. 38290). As such, the Uniform Guidelines have fulfilled a unique role in the enforcement of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Given this unique role, the Uniform Guidelines as a whole were not intended to be completely aligned with scientific knowledge or research. True enough, the Uniform Guidelines state that "the provisions of these Guidelines relat-ing to validation of selection procedures are intended to be consistent with generally accepted professional standards for evaluating standardized tests and other selection procedures" (Section 5c). It would be inappropriate, however, to assume that the Uniform Guidelines as a whole should be completely consistent with or even relevant to matters of scientific interest and research. It follows then that a call such as the one made by McDaniel, Kepes, and Banks (2011) for rescinding or making wholesale revisions to the Uniform Guidelines based on scientific research is misguided, and impractical given the social, political, and legal maelstrom such an effort would cause. This commentary will provide arguments against attempting to rescind or overhaul the Uniform Guidelines. I suggest that a more appropriate approach would be precise technical revisions only where necessary.
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