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§ METHODOLOGY · How ReadyFirst is built

Validity isn't a claim. It's a documented argument.

Civil service hiring decisions get challenged on the documentation, not on the claim. ReadyFirst's methodology is the documentation — what each cognitive measure is, why it predicts dispatcher performance, where the SIOP and EEOC posture sits, and what we don't claim. The packet is on file, not assembled mid-challenge.

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// THE STANDARD WORTH HOLDING US TO

The relevant standards are the SIOP Principles for the Validation and Use of Personnel Selection Procedures and the EEOC Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures. Both are publicly available; both lay out what a defensible validation argument looks like. The right question for any assessment vendor is whether their methodology survives a careful reading of those documents.

§ What we measure

Five cognitive domains, each mapped to dispatcher work.

§ Why these constructs

Three commitments behind the construct list.

01

Cognitive ability is the established predictor

Decades of industrial-organizational psychology converge on a clear finding: in cognitively-demanding roles, direct cognitive ability measures predict job performance more reliably than personality, self-report, or unstructured interview.

Dispatch is a cognitively-demanding role. The candidate who can hold three details at once, switch tasks under load, and stay alert at hour nine is the candidate the CTO program is trying to identify — and the candidate the cognitive measures find.

02

Direct measurement, not self-report

ReadyFirst measures cognitive abilities through behavioral tasks — what the candidate actually does — rather than through self-rating or personality inventory. The candidate's response patterns and timing are the data, not their assessment of their own ability.

Self-report measures are easier for candidates to game and harder to validate per SIOP. Direct cognitive measurement is harder to game and produces the kind of evidence the Uniform Guidelines accept for selection procedures.

03

Constructs selected for the dispatcher role

The five cognitive domains we measure aren't a generic battery. Each was selected because it maps to a specific task family in dispatch — call intake under load, multi-channel monitoring, console scanning, protocol switching, late-shift vigilance.

A generic cognitive battery is built to predict any cognitively-demanding job. ReadyFirst is built to predict dispatcher performance specifically — the construct selection is the start of the job-relevance argument, not a footnote to it.

§ The validity argument

Three layers of evidence, in the order SIOP expects them.

A CONSTRUCT VALIDITY

Each cognitive domain ReadyFirst measures sits on decades of peer-reviewed cognitive psychology. Working memory, sustained attention, processing speed, selective attention, and cognitive flexibility are not novel constructs — they are well-defined, well-instrumented, and well-understood.

The validation argument for construct validity is mechanism-based: the literature establishes what each construct is and how it is measured, and the documentation maps that established literature to the specific behavioral tasks ReadyFirst uses. This is the evidence chain SIOP recognizes for cognitive measures with mature scientific bases.

B JOB-RELEVANCE EVIDENCE

Construct validity alone is necessary but not sufficient. SIOP and the Uniform Guidelines also require evidence that the construct is relevant to the job being hired for. ReadyFirst documents the construct-to-task mapping per agency role: which dispatcher tasks in your jurisdiction draw on each cognitive domain, and how the assessment data should inform a decision about the candidate's fit for those tasks.

This documentation is tailored — not boilerplate. Your job description, your CTO program's structure, and your civil service framework shape what the job-relevance argument looks like for your agency.

C PREDICTIVE EVIDENCE

The strongest form of validity evidence is empirical: a study that shows, in a specific population, that the assessment predicts a specific job outcome. Where ReadyFirst has access to such data — with agency permission and appropriate sample sizes — we publish it. Where we don't, we don't claim it.

For a cognitive measure with established construct validity and documented job relevance, SIOP and the Uniform Guidelines accept this evidence chain as a basis for use, even without an agency-specific predictive study. The packet on file documents this position openly.

// WHAT WE DON'T CLAIM

Honest methodology requires naming the limits. We do not currently claim a published validity coefficient on a specific dispatcher cohort that ReadyFirst ran. We do not claim a third-party WCAG audit, a SOC 2 attestation in progress, or a CJIS-certified posture. We do not claim the assessment predicts who will be a great dispatcher — only who has the cognitive capacity to do the work. The packet says all of this in writing.

[ STANDARDS & FRAMEWORKS ]

What the methodology aligns to, in writing.

SIOP Principles
Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Principles for the Validation and Use of Personnel Selection Procedures. ReadyFirst's validation documentation is structured against these principles.
EEOC Uniform Guidelines
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures. The job-relevance documentation and audit trail are designed to support the analyses an agency needs to defend a selection procedure under the Guidelines.
ADA accommodations
No self-serve request flow built into the assessment today. Candidates request accommodations through the hiring agency; we work with the agency directly when something needs to be arranged on our side.
WCAG 2.1 AA
Designed against the standard, not third-party certified to it. The accessibility statement on file documents per-criterion posture.
FBI CJIS Security Policy
Pre-hire cognitive scores aren't Criminal Justice Information under the policy. We provide a one-page applicability statement for your CJIS Security Officer.

Each standard is addressed explicitly in the validation packet. Where alignment is partial or in-progress, the packet says so — overclaim is the failure mode that loses the audit, not the absence of a perfect record.

§ Next

Read the documented argument
your civil service partner will read.

Request the validation packet and we'll send the current version, plus the job-relevance documentation tailored to your role and the CJIS and accessibility statements your civil service partner will want with it.

Request the validation packet → Book a walkthrough