Traditional Interviews

1. Asking Applicants What they Would do Versus What they Did do: A Meta-Analytic Comparison of Situational and Past Behaviour Employment Interview Questions
When both question formats yielded high validity estimates, studies using past behavior questions, when used with descriptively anchored answer rating scales, yielded a substantially higher mean validity estimate than studies using the situational question format with descriptively-anchored answer rating scales. Question type was found to moderate interview validity, after controlling for whether studies used answer rating scales.

2. Hunter and Hunter (1984) Revisited: Interview Validity for Entry-Level Jobs
Results suggest that (a) structure is a major moderator of interview validity; (b) interviews, particularly when structured, can reach levels of validity that are comparable to those of mental ability tests; and (c) although validity does increase through much of the range of structure, there is a point at which additional structure yields essentially no incremental validity.

3. Interview Techniques
Good Cop Bad Cop

4. Medical school preadmission interviews: are structured interviews more reliable than unstructured interviews?
Nearly 50 years of research show that structuring interviews increases reliability. Axelson et al. contend otherwise. Theoretically, their argument is sound: unstructured interviews allow more opportunity for variability. This ignores the impact that structuring has on the cognitive process of rating in that it allows for more focused assessment on specific criteria.
And there is a fatal flaw in this paper; I did not see that they reported counter-balancing. But judge for yourself.

5. A Meta-Analytic Investigation of the Impact of Interview Format and Degree of Structure on the Validity of the Employment Interview
Findings suggest that the ‘received doctrine’ of interview invalidity is false. Interview structure moderated predictive validity coefficients to a considerable extent and they also produced mean validity coefficients twice as high as unstructured interviews. A number of psychological processes examined in previous interview research would have little effect in moderating the validity coefficients of the unstructured interview. Results also suggest that higher validity coefficients are associated with more reliable interviews and the use of formal job-analytic information in developing interview questions.

6. Rater and occasion impacts on the reliability of pre-admission assessments.
An intriguing proposal to achieve reliable semi-structured personal interviews. I tend to agree with the conclusions and have replicated its findings. Increasing multiple sampling will by definition increase reliability. Whether validity will also be improved remains to be seen.

7. The Validity of Employment Interviews: A Comprehensive Review and Meta-Analysis
Interview validity depends on the content of the interview and how the interview is conducted, and the nature of the criterion. Situational interviews had higher validity than job-related interviews which had higher validity than psychologically based interviews. Structured interviews had higher validity than unstructured interviews. Interviews showed similar validity for job performance and training performance criteria but the validity for the tenure criteria was lower.