Game-Framing Cognitive Assessments to Improve Applicant Perceptions

GAME-FRAMING COGNITIVE ASSESSMENTS TO IMPROVE APPLICANT PERCEPTIONS Andrew Burnett Collmus Old Dominion University, 2016 Director: Dr. Richard N. Landers Research has shown that although cognitive testing is key to quality hiring, applicants often react poorly to cognitive ability tests. Applicant reactions theory indicates that time-length judgments of a selection procedure can affect applicant perceptions. It was thus hypothesized that game-framing, the act of labeling something a game without changing the content, would cause participants to perceive that time was moving faster while completing a battery of cognitive ability tests. Similarly, it was expected that game-framing would increase test motivation and decrease test anxiety. Perceived length was tested as a mediator for the effects of game-framing on test anxiety and on test motivation. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the hypothesized relationships. In the observed dataset, game-framing caused decreases in perceived length, perceived length was positively related to test motivation, and perceived length mediated the relationship between game-framing and test motivation. The results of this study demonstrate that game-framing affects time perceptions. This finding has implications for gamification researchers, namely, that game-framing effects should be measured and accounted for in future studies. Furthermore, applicant reactions theorists have suggested that perceived time length is a key variable in the overall applicant reactions model, and this study is the first to empirically investigate perceived time length of a selection procedure in this context. Results indicate that perceived length may not relate to other applicant reaction variables as predicted by applicant reactions theory.