Job Task Analysis

Following the development of a program structure and a job description for a given exam (or series of exams that make up a level of certification), the next stage is to objectively and scientifically determine the actual skills, tasks and areas of knowledge that are necessary for that job.

The challenging issue is that anyone could come up with a list of tasks that they believe a Linux professional should be able to do. As a result, if you ask ten different Linux professionals what a "junior-level" IT professional should do, you may receive ten different sets of answers. Who is to say which list is more correct?

The reality is that on those ten different lists, there will be some common tasks that show up on all lists. The solution is to ask a number of Linux professionals for their lists of necessary job duties, and then to compile the responses in such a way that you can find the common and most important tasks.

In most professional job-related testing programs, this process is referred to as a job analysis study or job-task analysis (JTA). The purpose of a job analysis is to identify which tasks are performed by job holders and how important each task is. LPI conducted an extensive job analysis survey of Linux professionals for its LPIC program and will undertake a review of this survey in late 2006.

A second purpose of the job analysis survey is to be able to legally defend the validity of the exam objectives. In a number of jurisdictions where there is the potential for a hiring decision to be made based on criteria such as a certification, there is also the potential that someone might file a lawsuit against the certifying body claiming that the exams are biased and constructed in an unfair manner. The job analysis survey is critical in proving the legal defensibility of the exam objectives and blunting any criticism of bias.

Pre-Survey

Before the survey can be undertaken, the first step involves interacting with a pool of subject-matter experts (SME's) to compile a lengthy list of all the tasks that they believe might be performed at any time by the target audience of the certification (e.g. "junior Linux professionals" in the case of LPIC-1 completed in March 1999).

Job Analysis Survey

The tasks collected during the pre-survey are compiled into a job analysis survey. This survey asks practicing Linux professionals to rate each task on several dimensions. The dimensions include frequency (how often they perform the task), importance (how important it is for an administrator to be able to perform the task), and level. For our first survey in April 1999, over 1,400 people participated in the survey across the web.

Data Analysis

Next, we conduct statistical analysis of the responses to the job analysis survey. We compute statistics indicating, on average, how critical each task was rated by respondents. For our original Level 1, this was completed in April, 1999. The Job Task Analysis for both LPIC-1 and LPIC-2 will be refreshed in 2008.