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Validity.
 
Factor 1000 and Delta-WP are designed to have both risk-factor validity.
Factor 1000 is also intended to have job-relevant validity. Many 
respondents, however, reported that individuals too impaired to work can
pass while fit individuals often fail. 
 
According to employees' accounts of their own and others' behavior, 
individuals under the influence of drugs pass their tests. It is
possible that these individuals have built up tolerance to their drug of
choice, enabling them to perform their well-l earned fitness-for-duty
test and the more routine facets of their jobs.
 
But they may be too impaired to perform unfamiliar tasks. It is also 
plausible that individuals who are too impaired even to perform the most
basic aspects of their job can concentrate for the moments required to
pass a fitness-for-duty test. Still, despite these validity problems,
some believe that fitness-for-duty testing may deter a proportion of
employees from engaging in risky behavior. Testing Policies. 
Organizations have handily devised policies to administer
fitness-for-duty tests and address failures. Typically, employees can
fail their test only a few times within a given interval of time before
they must visit an EAP counselor and/or take a drug test. In some
organizations, someone who fails a test on a given day is, according to
human resource policy, removed from safety-sensitive responsibilities
and either sent home or given other work. In other organizations, the
employee's supervisor has greater input in interpreting a test failure,
and may determine that the employee is still ready to perform, even if
he or she has failed. No evidence was found to suggest that supervisors
abuse this prerogative. Administrative costs. According to reports from
organizations that have discontinued fitness-for-duty testing, as well
as organization s that currently test their employees, testing entails
more expenses than simply purchasing software. Organizations must decide
whether it is more costly to set up additional computer testing stations
and thereby reduce employees' waiting time to take daily tests, or to
save on equipment costs but increase workers' downtime. The daily
administration and interpretation of these tests also require time and
effort. Organizations with smaller staffs especially encounter
difficulties when they need to replace an employee who is found unfit to
perform safety-sensitive work.
Falsing.
Despite test manufacturers' that test-takers cannot purposely depress
their scores without being noticed, some employees reported that it is
possible to fail or pass deliberately. Perhaps the test manufacturers
are correct, but falsing goes undetected because organizations cannot
afford the time needed to monitor employees' test patterns as
comprehensively as they should. Employees' views. In general, employees'
attitudes toward fitness-for-duty testing are somewhat negative.
Employees consider these tests stressful, intrusive, time-consuming,
unfair, and invalid.
 
CONCLUSION
 
Performance-based fitness-for-duty testing would seem to be a promising 
tool to prevent substandard work and unsafe behavior. The popular press 
has sung the virtues of fitness-for-duty tests, and laboratory research 
has supplied evidence that they are  psychometrically solid. But what
has been conspicuously absent from the literature is a systematic
investigation of fitness-for-duty testing programs in organizations.
 
The study presented in this paper reviewed archival data from two 
commercial test manufacturers, interview data with managers of former
and current clients of fitness-for-duty tests, and questionnaires
completed by employees who take fitness-for-duty tests. The results
suggest that fitness-for-duty testing loses something in the translation
from theory to practice. These tests emerge valid and reliable in
laboratory investigations; yet current test-takers and managers of
former test-takers assert that fit individuals fail while obviously
impaired individuals pass, and employees claim they can pass or fail
their performance tests at will. Further, introducing and administering
a fitness-for-duty testing program require an ongoing commitment, which,
apparently, has left most organizations no time to monitor whether
fitness-for-duty testing actually enhances organizational safety and
productivity.
 
These results are personally disappointing to me. Although I, like 
Dennis Attwood and some of my respondents, still advocate
fitness-for-duty testing in theory, I am not convinced that Factor 1000
or Delta-WP is accomplishing what its clients expect.
 
References
 
Abbasi, S.M., Hollman, K.W., & Murrey, J.H., Jr. (1988). Drug 
testing: The moral, constitutional, and accuracy issues. Journal of 
Collective Negotiations, 17 (3), 221-235. 
 
Alcohol-related impairment. (1994, July). Alcohol Alert, No. 25, PH 351,
1-3. 
 
Allen, R.W., Jex, H.R., & Stein, A.C. (1984). A cybernetic test for the 
detection and deterrence of impaired human operators. Systems technology
inc. Paper # 340, Paper presented at the International Federation of
Automatic Control, 19th triennial world congress. 
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