At TTI, our hiring assessments are designed in accordance with federal employment laws and EEOC guidelines to ensure fairness, equity, and legal compliance. We provide our partners with guidance and training on the assessments’ proper, fair, and legal use. We adhere to disparate treatment and disparate impact principles to prevent intentional and unintentional discrimination based on protected characteristics such as race, gender, age, or disability.
Our assessments undergo rigorous validation using content, criterion-related, and construct validity methods to ensure they are job-related and consistent with business necessity, in compliance with the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP) and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
TTI conducts regular adverse impact studies to assess potential differential effects across demographic groups, consistently showing minimal bias. While we do not specifically design our assessments to measure or diagnose neurodivergent traits, we interpret results with consideration for individual differences and provide appropriate guidance on assessment outcomes.
TTI is committed to the continuous improvement of our assessment tools to ensure they remain valid, fair, and inclusive for all applicants.
SUPPORTING STATEMENTS
Overview of Assessment Principles in Hiring
The use of assessments, both in general and specifically in hiring, is guided by two fundamental principles that ensure fairness and compliance with legal and ethical standards. These principles—disparate treatment and disparate impact—help organizations ensure that assessment tools are used in a non-discriminatory manner.
Disparate Treatment: Intentional Discrimination
The first principle, disparate treatment, refers to the intentional discrimination against individuals based on protected characteristics such as race, gender, or age. For example, altering assessment scores based on an applicant’s race during a hiring process would constitute disparate treatment. Importantly, this principle does not concern the assessment tool itself but how the results are interpreted and applied in decision-making.
Disparate Impact: Unintended Exclusion
The second principle, disparate impact, addresses the unintended consequences of using seemingly neutral assessments that may disproportionately exclude individuals from certain protected groups. For instance, if an assessment results in a significantly lower pass rate for female candidates in a specific role, it may signal a disparate impact. This principle emphasizes the importance of evaluating outcomes to identify potential bias in assessment usage.
Ensuring Fairness Through Adverse Impact Studies
To ensure our assessments promote fairness and equal opportunity, we regularly conduct adverse impact studies Differential Effects. These reviews are critical in evaluating whether our assessments have differential effects on various demographic groups. A review of these studies demonstrates that our assessments show minimal differential effects across the broader TTI population, reinforcing their validity and fairness in the hiring and advancement process.
Legal Compliance in TTI Assessments
Compliance with Employment Laws
TTI assessments comply with employment laws that govern fair hiring practices. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP) establish standards for validating employment tests to ensure they are job-related and do not result in unlawful discrimination. TTI addresses such standards within the technical manual for the individual assessment, available here.
Validation of Assessments
To mitigate the risk of disparate impact claims, it is essential that assessments are validated to demonstrate they are job-related and consistent with business necessity, as established in the landmark Griggs v. Duke Power Co. decision. Validation methods include content validity, which ensures the assessment reflects actual job tasks or knowledge; criterion-related validity, which measures the correlation between test scores and job performance; and construct validity, which confirms that the test measures the intended attributes or competencies. TTI assessments are developed and tested in accordance with standards described by the American Psychological Association (APA), and validity is addressed directly within the TTI technical manual for each identified assessment. For additional information, please refer to our short treatise on reliability and validity, available here or a simplified version here, which outlines these validation concepts and how they are applied in practice.
Reasonable Accommodation Requirements
When a candidate has a disability, employers may be required under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to provide reasonable accommodations that ensure equal access to assessments—unless such accommodations would create an undue hardship. These accommodations may include extended time to complete assessments, accessible formats such as screen readers or large print, or adjustments to the testing environment. Such measures are essential for ADA compliance and for fostering a fair and inclusive hiring process for individuals with disabilities.
It is important to note that TTI assessments are not designed to measure or diagnose neurodivergent traits. As such, results should always be interpreted with consideration for individual differences, and accommodations should be provided as appropriate. For more information, please refer to our TTI Neurodivergence Paper, which outlines our approach to neurodiversity and the responsible use of assessments in diverse populations.
Practical Considerations:
The Unavoidable Influence of Personal Categories
Psychological constructs—such as personality traits, cognitive abilities, and behavioral tendencies—are deeply influenced by an individual’s experiences, culture, and background. A test taker’s worldview is shaped by their cultural context, social interactions, and life events. This variation is natural, expected, and even valuable, as it reflects the richness of human experience. However, while such diversity is important, it should not result in significant systematic deviations in how different groups engage with or are scored by an assessment.
This reality introduces a fundamental disconnect in psychological measurement: while the scientific goal is to objectively assess traits, those traits are inevitably filtered through social and cultural context. The influence of lived experience on how individuals interpret and respond to assessment items presents an ongoing challenge to ensuring assessments remain both valid and equitable across diverse populations.
In recognition of this complexity, TTI implements a continuous assessment improvement program focused on three key objectives: improving item relevance across diverse populations, gathering robust validity evidence, and refining assessment tools to ensure they remain scientifically rigorous and fair in reflecting the dynamic nature of human traits.
For TTI’s complete treatise on reliability, validity, and differential effect, visit https://ttiresearch.com/.