Sample size in validity studies of personnel selection

This report presents the results of several meta-analyses in which samples in the articles published in Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology and Personnel Psychology from 1983 to 1994 mere integrated. The findings show that in the last decade a small increase in sample size has been observed in relation to sample size of studies published two or three decades ago. However, the mean sample continues to be of a small size. This last finding suggests that sampling error continues to be the most important artifactual error for explaining the variability of validity coefficients. Some implications for the confidence intervals and power analysis are discussed.