Annual Sustainment
A validation study is not a permanent artifact. Jobs change, applicant populations shift, items become known through repeated exposure, and a cut score set several years ago against a different candidate pool becomes progressively harder to justify.
Sustainment keeps an assessment system defensible over time. The work is scheduled around the administration cycle and performed by the people who built the system, which makes it considerably more efficient than reconstructing the reasoning from documentation alone.
Sustainment is available for assessment systems Prism Data developed.
What Sustainment Covers
Sustainment is organized around the administration cycle and includes:
Post-Administration Item Analysis
Difficulty and discrimination statistics, distractor performance, and identification of items that did not function as intended.
Adverse Impact Monitoring
Annual analysis by protected group, tracked across cycles so that emerging patterns are visible before they become established.
Cut Score Review
Evaluation of the standard against current pass rates, candidate performance, and organizational needs, with documented rationale for maintaining or adjusting it.
Item Bank Health
Exposure tracking and replacement content to retire items that have circulated widely enough to compromise the assessment.
Updated Technical Memorandum
Annual documentation extending the original validation record, so the evidence supporting the process remains current rather than aging.
Advisory Support
A defined allocation of consultation time for questions that arise between cycles.
What You Get From It
Maintenance costs a fraction of rebuilding a system that has been allowed to become indefensible.
Documentation That Stays Current
Validation evidence updated each cycle rather than aging until it would not survive examination.
Problems Caught Early
Item drift, exposure, and emerging impact patterns identified while they are still small.
Protection of the Original Investment
Maintenance costs a fraction of rebuilding a system that has been allowed to become indefensible.
Continuity of Knowledge
Work performed by the people who built the system, who understand why each decision was made.
Where This Applies
Recurring Administrations
Organizations running the same assessment on a regular cycle, where item exposure and drift accumulate.
Systems With No Internal Owner
Organizations without staff who can perform psychometric maintenance, which is most organizations.
Processes in Sensitive Environments
Settings where selection decisions attract regular scrutiny and current documentation matters.
Related services & research
Explore related work and the published research behind our methods.
Keeping a system defensible over time
Sustainment keeps validation evidence current and catches problems while they are still small. Get in touch to discuss your administration cycle.
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