EAST-WEST PERFORMANCE DIFFERENCES ON WEST -GERMAN PERSONNEL-SELECTIONTESTS IN RELATION TO CULTURE-SPECIFIC EFFECTS OF SOME TEST CHARACTERISTICS

East German job applicants perform less well on West German personnel selection rests. The present article examines the extent to which thes e East-West performance differences are dependent on culture-specific effects of certain rest characteristics. In a study on 853 persons fro m two different aptitude testing sessions the influence of the followi ng factors was investigated: 3 the presence of rime limits, b) West-Ge rman linguistic code, c) West-German knowledge-domains as represented In the rest. Main findings were: 1. Processing frequency differed for some casks in a culturally specific manner which affected the magnitud e of inner-German performance differences. 2. As compared to overall s cores, specific items pertaining to verbal ability turned out to have an unexpectedly high degree of difficulty within the East German sampl e. 3. East-West differences as measured with a politics-knowledge-test varied dependent on respective task contents. All these examined test characteristics affected the magnitude of performance differences, fa voring West-German as compared to East-German performance results, tho ugh they are not completely accounting for the existing differences. I t may he assumed that test-exogeneous factors also play apart in the o ccurrence of East-West performance differences on aptitude tests. As a n example for such exogeneous factors, the role of sample and person c haracteristics is discussed.