Glossary
Industrial-Organizational Psychologist Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential industrial-organizational psychologist terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key industrial-organizational psychologist vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in industrial-organizational psychologist training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- 360 feedback
- Feedback from all directions.
- Adverse impact
- Unequal effect on groups.
- Assessment center
- Simulations for selection.
- Competency model
- Required skills.
- Engagement
- Employee commitment.
- Job analysis
- Studying job requirements.
- Organizational development
- Planned change.
- Psychometrics
- Science of measurement.
- Reliability
- Test is consistent.
- SIOP
- Society for I-O Psychology.
- Structured interview
- Same questions for everyone.
- Survey item
- One question.
- Uniform Guidelines
- Federal rules on selection.
- Validity
- Test measures what it should.
- Work sample
- Job task test.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Industrial-Organizational Psychologist practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Industrial-Organizational Psychologist training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.