Selection of school principals -: an evaluation study in the context of educational and personnel policy

This report refers to the evaluation of a selection procedure for school principals implemented in the mid 90s by the provincial school board of Upper Austria. Scores of a biographical questionnaire, a hearing with the school's teachers and representatives of the parents, AC tasks, and a personality questionnaire were combined to give a global decision criterion. Two to four years later, various aspects of the new principals' performance were rated by the school superintendent, the principal's teachers, parents' representatives, and the principals themselves. An optimally weighted sum of the scores in biography, hearing, AC, and personality reaches multiple validity coefficients of R =.40 (R =.54 after correction for selection effects). In addition to biographical data and hearing, AC and personality scales have incremental validity.