biographical data research

Biographical Resources: A Research Guide: Introduction

Introduction.

• National and International Biographies
• Biographical Indexes
• K. G. Saur Indexes & Microfiche
• Subject Biographies
• Dissertations and Theses
• Research Help

We purchase access to new online versions of major biographical reference sources as they become available. Many important biographical resources are available in print and on microfilm. This guide combines online titles with the selected microform and print biography titles in the Olin and Africana reference collections. Online databases are available to Cornell users only.

Biography is a branch of the study of history. The reliability of biographical sources varies widely and is subject to the usual vagaries of historical studies: lack of accurate information, too much or conflicting information, too little information, psychological theorizing, etc. But a well-written biographical article in a reliable reference book or database can be a source of both pleasure and enlightenment. Enjoy!

For further information or to locate titles not listed here, always feel free to consult with the reference staff .

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Biographical Research Methods

• Marta J. Eichsteller - University College Dublin
• Howard H. Davis - Bangor University, UK
• Description

This book is a practical and thought-provoking account of the use of biographical methods in social science research. The case studies are useful for advanced students and researchers, and for anyone interested in how we tell stories about our lives.

An accessible and lively text, drawing on numerous examples to demonstrate biographical narrative research in action. The fascinating and complex world of biographical research is presented in a highly accessible way. Students and researchers will learn a great deal from reading this before embarking on research projects with any degree of biographical focus. 

Anchored in studies drawn from a wide variety of disciplines, Biographical Research Methods fills glaring gaps in the literature through balanced sympathetic consideration of a wide range of methodological approaches and its illumination of both established and innovative research techniques. 

Narrative research in social science has come a long way since its urban life heyday.  Biographical Research Methods takes this forward, deftly focusing on concepts and techniques for analyzing the contours of personal experience.  Outstanding is a view to the context-specific whats and processual hows of biographical construction.       

The book of Eichsteller and Davis is an extremely instructive and inviting guide for getting introduced into the social world of biography research. On the one hand, the book is an empirically grounded and unbiased “sociology of knowledge” of distinctive approaches in biography research). It lucidly contrasts different basic assumptions and their implications for concrete methodical guidelines and practical research activities. On the other hand, it is an integrative guideline for the whole arc of work in accomplishing the research act of unravelling the intimate relations between individual and society and for deciphering the features and problems of society and other collective entities as seen and experienced from the perspective of individual members of society and of other collective entities. -The book is written in an elegant and deliberate style of language and presentation; it makes you want to start your own practical research work in biography analysis.

A great, incremental, up-to-date, accessible, comprehensive research methods text for any novice or experienced qualitative researcher contemplating narrative/biographical methods. I personally found this text invaluable for my own PhD - thanks

A supplementary book but a must for those who write their dissertations with the use of Narrative Inquiry.

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SAGE Research Methods is a research methods tool created to help researchers, faculty and students with their research projects. SAGE Research Methods links over 175,000 pages of SAGE’s renowned book, journal and reference content with truly advanced search and discovery tools. Researchers can explore methods concepts to help them design research projects, understand particular methods or identify a new method, conduct their research, and write up their findings. Since SAGE Research Methods focuses on methodology rather than disciplines, it can be used across the social sciences, health sciences, and more.

With SAGE Research Methods, researchers can explore their chosen method across the depth and breadth of content, expanding or refining their search as needed; read online, print, or email full-text content; utilize suggested related methods and links to related authors from SAGE Research Methods' robust library and unique features; and even share their own collections of content through Methods Lists. SAGE Research Methods contains content from over 720 books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks, the entire “Little Green Book,” and "Little Blue Book” series, two Major Works collating a selection of journal articles, and specially commissioned videos.

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Biographical Data

Biographical data, or biodata, are measures of key aspects of individuals’ life experiences intended to predict job applicants’ future performance in organizations, whether that performance is task-specific job performance, teamwork, or shoplifting. Although bio-data can be developed to measure a wide array of experiences and psychological constructs, the fundamental and general premises underlying the predictive power of biodata measures are that

• individuals in free societies shape their life experiences, and they also are shaped by them;
• this process of reciprocal influence between personality and situations occurs over a large time span; and therefore,
• measures of past experience should predict future work behavior, especially given a relatively unconstrained environment where employees’ typical performance can be wide-ranging.

In light of these premises, items on a biodata measure can be relatively personality oriented or covert in nature (e.g., “To what extent does your happiness depend on how things are going at work?”), or they can be relatively situation oriented and overt in nature (e.g., “Approximately how many books have you read in the past three months?”). In either case responding involves some cognitive processing where test takers are required to recall and summarize information, the accuracy of which depends on the accuracy of prior perception and storage, and in many cases the saliency or recency of the event.

Although biodata can vary widely in their content and constructs measured and can be scored in different ways, they have consistently demonstrated moderate to high levels of validity across job types (approximately .30); they also demonstrate incremental validity beyond ability and personality measures in predicting performance. Constituent biodata items either explicitly or implicitly reflect constructs such as ability, personality, motivation, interpersonal skills, and interests. They can be relatively pure measures of these constructs; however, biodata items that ask test takers about their experiences may be related to a combination of constructs, not just one. Analyses of the latter type of items may result in a weak general factor in a factor analysis or a low alpha reliability coefficient. Both test-retest reliability and alpha reliability should be considered when attempting to measure the stability of scores on biodata measures.

Item Attributes

An outline of 10 major attributes of biodata items was proposed by F. A. Mael and is as follows:

• Historical versus hypothetical (past behaviors versus predicted behaviors in the future, or behaviors in what-if scenarios)
• External versus internal (behaviors versus attitudes)
• Objective versus subjective (observable or countable events versus self-perceptions)
• Firsthand versus secondhand (self-descriptions versus how people would say others describe them)
• Discrete versus summative (single events versus averaging over a period of time)
• Verifiable versus nonverifiable
• Controllable versus noncontrollable (circumstances that could or could not be influenced by a decision)
• Equal access versus unequal access (access to opportunities with respect to the group being tested)
• Job relevant versus nonjob relevant
• Noninvasive versus invasive

Scoring Methods

Historically, biodata measures have developed out of a tradition of strong empiricism, and therefore a wide variety of scoring methods have been proposed. The criterion-keying approach involves taking individuals’ responses to a given biodata item and calculating the mean criterion score or the criterion-related validity for each response option. This is done for each item, and these values are used as item response weights for scoring purposes. Weights may be rationally adjusted when nonlinear patterns in relatively continuous response options are found or when some weights are based on small sample sizes. A similar approach to criterion keying can be taken when keying biodata items not to criteria but rather to personality or temperament measures. This is a particularly interesting approach in keying a set of objective or verifiable biodata items, which tend to be less susceptible to faking but often are harder to assign to single psychological constructs. (Even if such keying is not done, it remains helpful to place the biodata measure within a nomological net of cognitive and noncognitive constructs.) When biodata items can be assigned to constructs in a relatively straightforward manner, such as by developing item content around constructs or through an a priori or post hoc subject matter expert (SME) item-sorting procedure, a straightforward scoring of each item along a single underlying continuum may be possible as is done with traditional Likertscale self-report measures of personality.

Configural scoring is an entirely different approach to scoring biodata items, because it involves grouping individuals into representative profiles of biodata scores. Subgroups are defined, both conceptually and methodologically, as internally consistent yet externally distinct, similar to the interpretation of statistically significant group differences in the analysis of variance. Individuals are often assigned to subgroups based on their similarity to a subgroup mean, such as in k-means analysis; or sometimes a set of data is aggregated until the appropriate balance between parsimony and descriptiveness is reached, such as in Ward’s method. Subgroup profiles may then be labeled (e.g., goal-oriented social leaders or emotional underachievers) and then related to relevant external criteria, or profiles of criteria, for purposes such as personnel selection and placement; or subgroup profiles can be used in their own right for training and development.

Two general points regarding the scoring of biodata items are worth noting. First, any appropriate scoring method should be informed by both rational and empirical approaches. Being purely rational or theory based ignores important empirical data that could serve to revise the theoretical underpinnings that generated the biodata items in the first place—or at least it could revise subsequent item-development rules. Conversely, being purely empirical in the absence of a theoretical or conceptual rationale would impede, if not preclude, appropriate item development, item revision, and score use and interpretation. Second, item-scoring methods that are developed on one sample should be cross-validated on an independent sample, such as a holdout sample from the original data set or an entirely different sample. Doing so helps ensure that the features of the model are generalizable and not sample specific; for example, cross-validation can ensure that increased validity, reduction of group mean differences, or a cleaned up exploratory factor analysis result achieved in one sample by selectively reweighting or removing biodata items can then be achieved in an independent sample using the same subset of items, so that the original results (in large part, at least) cannot be attributed to capitalization on chance. The same concern applies to regression models, where least-squares regression weights may capitalize on chance and thus artificially inflate validity. In this case, cross-validation formulas can be applied to the whole sample, to estimate what the shrinkage in validity would be should those weights be applied to an independent sample of the same size.

Race Differences

Because biodata items vary widely in content, no general statement about race differences can be made that is of any use. At a more specific level, however, bio-data containing culturally relevant content have demonstrated Black-White subgroup differences in terms of differential item functioning (DIF). Black-White differences in biodata have also been found in the domain of swimming proficiency. Other race differences are likely when the biodata measures are aligned with constructs where it is known that race differences exist, such as general cognitive ability or certain personality traits.

Applicant Reactions

Meta-analysis indicates that studies using biodata measures generally show a favorability (i.e., job relevance and fairness) rating at about the midpoint of the scale, with measures such as interviews, resumes, and cognitive ability tests showing greater favorability and personal contacts and integrity tests showing less favorability. Although the meta-analytic mean across studies is stable, nontrivial variability in favorability ratings across studies exists; this is likely because of the variety of biodata measures that can be developed. This highlights a consistent theme in the research literature: Biodata measures tend to be viewed more favorably when they are perceived as relevant to the job at hand and part of a fair personnel selection system.

References:

• Dean, M. A., & Russell, C. J. (2005). An examination of biodata theory-based constructs in a field context. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 2, 139-149.
• Mael, F. A. (1991). A conceptual rationale for the domain and attributes of biodata items. Personnel Psychology, 44, 763-927.
• Mount, M. K., Witt, L. A., & Barrick, M. R. (2000). Incremental validity of empirically keyed biodata scales over GMA and the five factor personality constructs. Personnel Psychology, 53, 299-323.
• Oswald, F. L., Schmitt, N., Ramsay, L. J., & Gillespie, M. A. (2004). Developing a biodata measure and situational judgment inventory as predictors of college performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 187-207.
• Oullette, J. A., & Wood, W. (1998). Habit and intention in everyday life: The multiple processes by which past behavior predicts future behavior. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 54-74.
• Reiter-Palmon, R., & Connelly, M. S. (2000). Item selection counts: A comparison of empirical key and rational scale validities in theory-based and non-theory-based item pools. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85, 143-151.
• Individual Differences
• Industrial-Organizational Psychology

Biographical Research: Religion, Race, Ethnicity, Gender

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• Catholic Almanac Call Number: (LC RH) Ref AY81.R6F8 (older editions in stacks) Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 1969 - . Biographies of the Pope, Cardinals, American Bishops, and other theological figures.

Full text of OUP reference books on African Americans. Includes the entire contents of the Dictionary of African Biography and The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought. Limited to 5 Simultaneous Users.

Full text of ethnic, minority, and native presses with diverse perspectives from 1959-present (varies by publication). Ethnicities include: African American/Caribbean/African; Arab/Middle Eastern; Asian/Pacific Islander; European/Eastern European; Hispanic; Jewish; Native People; and Multi-Ethnic People.

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Keeping Pace with Science and Engineering: Case Studies in Environmental Regulation (1993)

Chapter: biographical data.

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Biographical Data Steering Committee CHARLES R. O'MELIA is professor of environmental engineering and chairman of the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University. He received his B.C.E. (1955) from Manhattan Col- lege and his M.S.E. (1956) and Ph.D. (1963) in sanitary engineering from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Dr. O'Melia was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1989. His research interests are in aquatic chemistry, water and wastewater treatment, and modeling of natural surface and subsurface waters. J. CLARENCE (TERRY) DAVIES is director of the Center for Risk Man- agement at Resources for the Future. His previous positions have included assistant professor of public policy at Princeton University, executive vice president of the Conservation Foundation, and assistant administrator for policy at the Environmental Protection Agency. Most recently, he served as executive director of the National Commission on the Environment. Dr. Davies is a political scientist who, over the past 30 years, has written sev- eral books and numerous articles about environmental policy. ROBERT C. FORNEY is a retired executive vice president, member of the board of directors, and member of the executive committee of E.I. du Font de Nemours & Company. Dr. Forney held positions of increasing responsi- bility in Du Font, including product manager, director of the Products Mar- keting Division, general director of the Marketing Division, and vice presi 263

264 BIOGRAPHICAL DATA dent and general manager of the Textile Fibers Department. He is a former member of the Board of Governors of the Purdue Foundation and serves as a director on several boards. Dr. Forney received his B.S. and Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Purdue University. ROGER O. McCLELLAN, D.V.M., serves as president of the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. A member of the Institute of Medicine, he has previously chaired the Na- tional Research Council (NRC) Committee on Toxicology and concurrently serves as a member of the NRC Committee on Risk Assessment Methodolo- gies for Hazardous Air Pollutants. He is a former chairman of the EPA Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, is concurrently a member of the EPA Science Advisory Board Executive Committee, and has been a member of numerous other advisory groups in government, academe and private industry. He has a long-standing interest in integrating data from human, laboratory animal, and in vitro studies to assess human risks from exposure to radiation and chemicals. M. GRANGER MORGAN is professor and head of the Department of Engi- neering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include public policies in which technical issues play a central role and techniques for dealing with uncertainty in quantitative policy analysis. He was educated at Harvard University and received his Ph.D. in applied physics from the University of California at San Diego in 1969. Dr. Morgan has served on a number of committees of the National Research Council and EPA's Science Advisory Board. PAUL R. PORTNEY is vice president and senior fellow at Resources for the Future, an independent, nonpartisan research and educational organization concerned with natural resources and the environment, where he previously was director of its Center for Risk Management. He is also a visiting lecturer at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. In 1979-1980, he served as chief economist at the Council on Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of the President. Dr. Portney received his Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern University and is the author or coauthor of a number of journal articles and books, including Public Policies for Environmental Protection. JOHN H. SEINFELD is the Louis E. Nohl Professor and chairman of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology. A member of the faculty of Caltech since 1967, he was ap- pointed executive officer for chemical engineering in 1973 and became Louis E. Nohl Professor in 1980. He has been chairman of the Division of Engi -

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA 265 peering and Applied Science since 1990. Dr. Seinfeld is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research interests are in the atmospheric chemis- try and physics of air pollution. He received a B.S. from the University of Rochester in 1964 and a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1967, both degrees in chemical engineering. MYRON F. UMAN is assistant executive officer for special projects of the National Research Council (NRC). Concurrently, Dr. Uman is a member of the adjunct faculty of George Mason University and a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University. His Ph.D. is from Princeton University (1968) in electrical engineering and plasms physics. At the NRC since 1973, he has managed or conducted more than 20 formal studies of the application of scientific and technical information to the development and implementation of public policy across a wide range of enviromental issues. Authors WALTER R. BOYNTON received his B.S. in biology from Springfield Col- lege in 1959, M.S. in marine sciences from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1974, and Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Florida in 1975. Dr. Boynton's expertise is in estuarine nutri- ent dynamics and seagrass ecology. He has served on a number of advisory boards and committees, including Science Advisory Board, Maryland De- partment of Natural Resources, Chesapeake Bay Research and Monitoring Division, Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee to EPA's Chesa- peake Bay Program, and the Calvert County Environmental Commission. Dr. Boynton is currently a professor at the Chesapeake Biological Labora- tory of the Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies. JAMES D. FINE is an environmental analyst with LSA Associates, Inc. Mr. Fine performs air quality, environmental acoustics, and economic studies related to municipal development and natural resource management issues. Mr. Fine joined LSA after working as an information systems analyst at Anderson Consulting. Mr. Fine holds a B.S. degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business (1989~. MICHAEL COUGH is manager of the Biological Applications Program at the Office of Technology Assessment. He received his Ph.D. degree at Brown University in 1966. After a 10-year academic career, including two Fulbright Lectureships, he first joined OTA in 1978. He directed projects in environmental and occupational health in the OTA Health Program and OTA's oversight programs related to Agent Orange and atomic bomb test veterans.

266 BIOGRAPHICAL DATA Between 1985 and 1990, he was a consultant and director of the Center for Risk Management, Resources for the Future. He is the author of Dioxin, Agent Orange (Plenum, 1986) and coeditor with T.S. Glickman of Readings in Risk (Johns Hopkins, 1990~. JOHN D. GRAHAM is professor of policy and decision sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he teaches the methods of risk analysis and benefit-cost analysis. Dr. Graham is the founding director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, which promotes analytical thinking about societal responses to health, safety, and environmental hazards. He also heads the Harvard Injury Control Center, which promotes science-based interventions to control trauma from both intentional and unintentional causes. He is the author of four books and dozens of scientific articles and serves on the international editorial boards of Risk Analysis and Accident Analysis and Prevention. THOMAS W. HORTON received his bachelor's degree in liberal arts with a concentration in economics from the Johns Hopkins University in 1968. He is a writer and a naturalist. From 1972 to 1987, Mr. Horton was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, specializing in environmental topics. He has re- ceived regional and national awards for environmental coverage of Chesa- peake Bay. In 1987 he published Bay Country, a collection of essays that won the 1988 John Burroughs Medal of the Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1988 Mr. Horton wrote Turning the Tide, the first comprehen- sive assessment of the state of the Chesapeake Bay. His most recent book on the Chesapeake, Waters Way, was published in 1992. Currently Mr. Horton writes a weekly column on "Environment" for the Baltimore Sun and is working on another book. JASON E. JOHNSTON is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology, where he studied in the Technology and Public Policy Program and the Department of Chemical Engineering. Mr. Johnston is currently a staff specialist with Karch and Associates, Inc., a scientific consulting firm spe- cializing in toxicology, epidemiology, and risk assessment. Mr. Johnston has experience in evaluating exposures to, and the associated health risks of, toxic substances in industrial settings and at hazardous waste sites. He has also performed analyses of environmental data and information in the environmental policy, regulatory compliance and litigation arenas. RENATE D. KIMBROUGH is senior medical associate at the Institute for Evaluating Health Risks. She is a doctor of medicine with training in pathology, diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology, and fellow of the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology. Dr. Kimbrough conducted

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA 267 research in toxicology and environmental health at the Centers for Disease Control for 27 years before being appointed adviser to the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for Medical Toxicology and Risk Evaluation in 1989. She joined IEHR in 1991. THOMAS C. MALONE received his B.A. in zoology from Colorado Col- lege in 1965, M.S. in oceanography from the University of Hawaii in 1967, and Ph.D. in biology from Stanford University in 1971. Dr. Malone's ex- pertise is in plankton dynamics and the processes of eutrophication in coastal ecosystems. He has served on a number of advisory boards and commit- tees, including the executive board of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee to EPA's Chesapeake Research Consortium, and vice chair of the University National Oceanographic Laboratory System Advisory Coun- cil. Dr. Malone is the director of the Horn Point Environmental Laboratory of the Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies and of the Multiscale Experimental Ecosystem Research Center, an EPA Center for Exploratory Environmental Research. JOHN A. MOORE is president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Evaluating Health Risks (IEHR). IEHR is established as a nonprofit institution to serve government, industry and the public on issues that ad- dress the health risk of chemicals. Before joining IEHR, Dr. Moore was assistant administrator of the Office of Pesticides and Toxic Substances at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He came to EPA from the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, where he was both director for toxicology research and testing and deputy director of the Na- tional Toxicology Program. Dr. Moore received a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from Michigan State University in 1963; he is also certi- fied by the American Board of Toxicology. RICHARD D. MORGENSTERN holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Uni- versity of Michigan (1970~. He was a tenured associate professor of eco- nomics at Queens College of the City University of New York before be- coming the deputy assistant director for energy, the environment, and natural resources at the Congressional Budget Office in 1977. Subsequently, he served as legislative assistant to Senator J. Bennett Johnston (1979-1980) and then the director of the Energy Program of the Urban Institute. Since 1982, he has been director of the Office of Policy Analysis of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. While at EPA, he has served as acting assistant administrator for policy, planning, and evaluation (1991-1993) and as deputy administrator during the transition period at the beginning of the Clinton administration. -

268 BIOGRAPHICAL DATA SUELLEN WERNER PIRAGES received her Ph.D. at Stanford University. Pier area of expertise is biological sciences, with emphasis on environmen- tal toxicology and genetics. Dr. Pirages was a senior staff officer in the Environmental Studies Board of the National Research Council during 1977 to 1890. She then served as a senior analyst in the Industry, Technology, and Employment Program of the U.S. congressional Office of Technology Assessment. From 1984 to l99O, Dr. Pirages was managing director for environmental policy and director of hazardous waste programs for the Na- tional Solid Waste Management Association. Currently, Dr. Pirages is ex- ecutive director at Karch & Associates, Inc., a scientific consulting firm specializing in toxicological and epidemiological evaluations, regulatory and legislative policy analyses, and risk assessment applications. SUSAN W. PUTNAM is a research associate in environmental policy at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. She received her doctoral degree from the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1991. Since joining the Center for Risk Analysis, Dr. Putnam has continued her doctoral research exploring the role of scientific advisory groups in public health policymaking and has examined the risks and benefits of chlorinated drinking water. JAMES L. REGENS is Freeport-McMoRan Professor of Environmental Policy at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. While with the U.S. Envi- ronmental Protection Agency from 1980 to 1983, Dr. Regens chaired the Group on Energy and Environment of the Organization for Economic Coop- eration and Development from 1981 to 1983 and was EPA Joint Chair of the National Acid Precipitation Program from 1981 to 1982. He is vice-chair- man of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Environmental Advisory Board. PHILIP M. ROTH is a principal of Envair, an unincorporated association dedicated to carrying out contract research and offering consulting services in the environmental and earth sciences. Dr. Roth has been an independent consultant in environmental science and policy since 1983. He was vice president of Systems Applications, Inc., served as a member of the board of directors, and was technical director and director of environmental studies during the period from 1969 to 1983. Dr. Roth holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D., also in chemical engineering, from Princeton University. PHILIP C. SINGER is a professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is also director of the Water Resources Engineering Program. He has conducted research on the chemical aspects of water and wastewater treatment for the past 28 years, for the past 17 years focusing on the forma -

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA 269 lion and control of disinfection by-products in drinking water. Dr. Singer is a past chairman of the Research Division of the American Water Works Asso- ciation. He is currently on the editorial board of the journal Ozone Science and Engineering- and was formerly an associate editor of Environmental Science and Technology. He is also a member of the National Research Council's Water Science and Technology Board. His S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in environmental sciences and engineering are from Harvard University. COURT STEVENSON received his B.S. in biology from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York in 1966 and his Ph.D. in 1972 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He began research in wetlands at the University of Maryland at College Park in 1972 where he was among the first to recognize the massive decline of submersed aquatic vegetation in Chesapeake Bay and link it to nutrient loadings from the surrounding water- shed. His current research interests include diffuse source inputs at the land-sea interface to seagrass ecology in tropical lagoons, as well as in the impacts of sea-level on coastal systems throughout the world. ROBERT M. WHITE is president of the National Academy of Engineering and vice chairman of the National Research Council, the principal operating agency of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. White has had a distinguished career in environmental science and engineering. He established one of the first corporations de- voted to environmental science and services. He served in the government under five Presidents, from 1963 to 1977, first as chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau, and finally as the first administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Prior to his election as president of the NAE, Dr. White was president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. He holds a B.A. degree in geology from Harvard University and M.S. and Sc.D. degrees in meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. STEPHEN D. ZIMAN is a staff scientist in the Air Issues and Technology Team, Environmental Group, at Chevron Research and Technology Com- pany. His principal responsibilities are in technical and regulatory areas of air quality planning at the federal and state levels. Dr. Ziman has worked as a research scientist with Chevron Chemical Company and for Chevron USA Environmental Affairs and Chevron Production prior to his present position. He was an American Chemical Society Congressional Science Fellow dur- ing 1979-1980, and worked as a staff member for the U.S. House of Repre- sentatives Subcommittee on Science, Research, and Technology. Dr. Ziman received his B.S. degree in chemistry from the University of Michigan in 1967 and his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Wisconsin in 1971.

The technical basis of environmental regulation is always at the edge of scientific and engineering understanding. As knowledge improves, questions will inevitably arise about past decisions. Understanding how the regulatory system accommodates changing scientific and engineering knowledge is vital for achieving environmental values.

In this new volume, seven case studies shed light on the interplay between environmental regulation and scientific and engineering understanding, with practical conclusions on how science and engineering should be used for more sound and timely regulatory decision making. The book provides helpful timelines of scientific and regulatory developments for the cases, which include:

• Factors impeding clean-up strategies in the Chesapeake Bay.
• Pivotal questions in the regulation of ambient ozone concentrations.
• How science has been heeded but also ignored in regulation of new municipal waste combustors.
• Impact of scientific findings on control of chlorination by-products.
• Acid rain and what can be learned about research and public policy debate.
• Controversy over the need for formaldehyde regulation.
• The effect of public perception on management decisions concerning dioxin.

This volume will be of practical interest to policymakers, business and environmental advocates, scientists, engineers, researchers, attorneys, faculty, and students.

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Biographical Research

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Research Article

Biographical Data : A Bibliometrics Study and Visualization Analysis via CiteSpace

Xiaoqing Xu, Guandong Song

This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal.

https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-3346737/v1

This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License

You are reading this latest preprint version

Biographical data, a measure of individual tendency to future behavior based on their past life experiences, was often used in the fields of human resources and psychology, and had been expanding to other fields in recent years. A large number of literature on biographical data had been published internationally in the past decades. 464 literature was retrieved from the database of Web of Science core from 1951 to 2022 as the main, quantitatively visualized and analyzed the characteristics of literature, research hotspots, research process in this research field, pointed out the current problems to be solved with the help of CiteSpace. The study found that: Fluctuating upward trend in annual publication of biographical data literature, the authors, the regional scale of cooperation network had been initially formed, the overall view of Europe and the United States to pay more attention to the exploration of biographical data. The study of biographical data dimensions had always been a research hotspot. At present, biographical data still had problems such as information falsification, personal privacy leakage, quantification difficulties. Countries should strengthen academic cooperation to improve the current problems and promote the innovative development of biographical data in the future.

biographical data

knowledge graph

human resources

1 Introduction

Biographical data, originated in the late 19th century, rapidly emerged for its good predictive validity of individual performance, Peters first proposed a method for improving scientific selection at an international conference in 1894 by analyzing a series of standardized questions about past experience, which was considered the most primitive form of biographical information(Song,1996). Biographical data had been widely used in the field of human resources in the mid-20th century. Research over the years had shown that biographical data could provide a large amount of information about applicants, with good predictability, had become an effective predictive and selection tool(Allowrth and Hesketh, 2000;Mumford et al.,1996),played an increasingly important role in the field of human resources. Biographical data was better than psychological tests, interviews, work samples, evaluation centers in predicting performance(Gatewood and Field,1998). With the continuous progress of internet technology, job seekers could easily fill in job information online, which meant that the amount of recruitment and talent selection information collected would continue to increase, problems exited such as information overload. Improving the efficiency of recruitment and talent selection had become one of the challenges faced by organizations and enterprises, biographical data could provide objective and visual information data for them to assess the fit between candidates and positions, enabling more scientific recruitment and selection decisions. Biographical data also contributed to education, psychology and other fields, which could be used to predict students' behavior and psychological evaluation. Thus, biographical data is not only an important subject, but also a complex research area .

Owens and Schoenfeldt first summarized the concept of biographical data, which was to record the individual's life experiences in the form of a questionnaire, just like filling out a detailed resume information form, thereby predicting the individual's future performance in various aspects such as adaptability, career orientation, academic achievement and job performance(Owens and Schoenfeldt,1979). This definition was still an important basis for researchers to study the field of biographical data. Mael proposed that biographical data was the historical record of individual behavior and social identities based on Owens and Schoenfeldt(Mael,1991),which could be used to predict future work performance by measuring the past experiences that may affect the subject's future behavior performance.(Tian and Xie,2010). Many other researchers believed that biographical data should include not only objective information, but also intangible information such as attitudes, beliefs, hobbies(Lefkowitz et al.,1999;Oviedo-Garcia,2007;Sisco andReilly,2007). Mount summarized the definition of the research method of biographical data as "Judging the degree of match between the applicant and the job application by understanding the historical information of the subjects demographic information, personality characteristics, life experiences and family background"(Mount et al.,2000). Consequently, biographical information could be understood to include three aspects: Demographic characteristics include gender, age, years of education, personal health; Personal early experiences (childhood, work, study experience), family relations and previous positions; Personal characteristics such as personal interests, attitudes, beliefs and values related to past experiences(Tian and Xie,2010).Song(1996) introduced the concept of biographical data, feasibility, and methods of developing and scoring biographical information forms, he discussed six attributes to be considered in the measurement and development of biographical questionnaires from a methodological point of view, biographical data was defined as "Biographical information that people usually present in self-reported, standardized, multiple-choice questionnaires", job seekers were asked to state in the questionnaire their previous experiences along with demographic data (age, gender, marital status) and other material that could be inferred or corroborated in relation to their personalities and self-evaluation. In addition to the above, the concept of biographical information had been the subject of many in-depth academic studies. Our comparison revealed commonalities between the different definitions, most of which collected information in the form of questionnaires and admitted that the individual's past experiences could predict his or her future behavior.

The theoretical basis of biographical data was that "Past behavior is the best indicator to predict the future", when we knew individual's past in detail we could effectively predict their future behavior and performance(Cascio,1998).Toward greatly explained the predictive role of biographical data and studied the influence of causal or correlative events on individual behavior, researchers had gradually proposed a series of theoretical models, such as the developmental integrative model, the ecological model, and social identity theory. The developmental integration model was supported by disciplines from developmental psychology, the ecological model was supported by ecology and environmental science, and the production of social identity theory made use of the research results of social psychology. The developmental integrative model could identify different developmental patterns from different life experiences(Liu and Wu,2016),which argued that people with similar experiences or developmental environments were more likely to develop similar behavioral patterns in the future, fully reflected the influence of different life experiences on the conduct of human beings. Ecological model was proposed on the basis of the developmental integrative model, was by far the most comprehensive and reliable theory of biographical data recognized by most researchers, which described a recursive sequence of individual life events as a process of learning and adaptation(Dean and Russell,1999).The model indicated that the choices people face in daily life interacted with their corresponding outcomes and gradually formed patterns of individual choice behavior. Social identity theory indicated that when individuals had a sense of belonging to a certain social group, their behaviors would converge to this group and produced more and more shared characteristics (Mael,1988),which could be understood as: All the group experiences that the individual had participated in the past had a close influence on his or her future mindset and behavior mode. When the individual recognized that he belonged to a specific social group, the behavior mode and values would also be affected by this group. Social identity theory in a sense complemented and developed ecological model theory. The emergence of the three theoretical models not only enhanced our in-depth understanding of biographical data, also helped to promote the rise of interdisciplinary researches and cooperation between different fields.

Many qualitative studies of biographical data existed, but relevant quantitative studies lacked. Based on the concept and theoretical basis of biographical data, this study used CiteSpace to summarize the existing literature to fill the research gap. The main contributions were as follows: (A)The analysis of the characteristics of the current biographical data literature helped to understand the degree of activity, research network, cooperation opportunities, and evaluation of research influence in the field. (B)The revelation of research hotspots was conducive to improving the frontier and practicability of the research, expanded the boundaries of disciplines, promoted the integration of disciplines. (C)The understanding of the development process of this field was helpful to understand the research background, evolution processing, provided guidance and reference for researchers.

2 Methodology

Based on the quantitative analysis method of bibliometrics, the literature in the core database of Web of Science was imported into CiteSpace. The time span was set as 1951–2022,time slice as always1(1 years as a unit of observation)and the threshold value was set to "50", the literature co-occurrence, clustering, collaborative network diagrams of biographical data were further generated. Excel was used to calculate the information data exported from CiteSpace and to create relevant diagrams, which were used to explore the research hotspots and trends in the area of biographical data. In the visual knowledge diagrams, the size of nodes could reflect the frequency of keywords, authors, institutions, countries and citations. The higher the frequency, the larger the node. The lines between nodes represented connections, the thicker the lines, the closer the connections.

3 Source material

The relevant literature were obtained from the core database of Web of Science.To enhance the persuasiveness and representativeness of the article, the reference sources were only set to SCI or SSCI journals. The search formula had been fine-tuned as follows:TS=("biodata")OR TS=("biographical*data")OR TS=("biographical *information")OR TS=("biographical*blank") OR TS=("biographical*inventory"),the literature type was restricted to article, proceeding paper, review article, and deleted irrelevant categories in the citation subject, finally obtained 1246 relevant literature. After screening one after another, all records and references were exported in plain text format. Duplicates or incomplete literature were removed by using the de-duplication function of CiteSpace. The remaining 464 literature were visualized to obtain the information visualization diagrams by path-finding network algorithm .

4 Literature Search and Analysis Process

Firstly, the required biographical data could be selected and exported from the database. Secondly, the visualization of the biographical data could be realized through CiteSpace, the basic information of the literature data could be able to import into Excel and saved, relevant diagrams could be made according to the needs. The specific operation flow was shown in Fig.  1 below.

5.1 Literature characterization

5.1.1 chronological distribution of the literature.

Although biographical data had appeared since the end of the 19th century, the research results from 1951 to 2022 were limited. According to the Fig. 2 , the annual number of published literature collected from the core database of Web of Science had fluctuated from 1951 to 1991, with occasional small increased. The number of published literature fluctuated greatly after 1992, with 2002(3 papers)as the low point. The publications numbered more than 6 and less than 30 in other years. Number of publications showed an upward trend from 2003 to 2009, reached the peak in 2009 (26 papers). Since then, the average number of publications per year had been high, despite a decrease in the total number of publications.

5.1.2 Co-country analysis

Figure 3 showed the cooperation between different countries in the research field of the biographical data and countries with numerous publications. The larger nodes in the diagram represented the more literature published in that region and the more attention it received, and the connecting lines between the nodes represented the academic links between countries.

In Fig. 3 , the node of "USA" was the biggest, with the largest number of 201 articles, which had a high degree of attention to the field of biographical data.The second country was "GERMANY", with 27 literature. The third country was the "ENGLAND"with 21 literature, which was a small number of literature in comparison. Research on biographical data was mainly concentrated in Europe and the United States, and had formed a network of scale centered on the USA, Asian countries were relatively less involved, which may be related to the origin of biographical data, Europe and the United States began to research on biographical data earlier, had a more developed foundation and resources in historical records, book publishing, academic research, which provided a good environment and opportunities for writing and publishing various types of biographies. Academic and publishing support for biographical research and publication had further encouraged European and the United States authors to publish relevant literature. More exploration and research is needed in the future to broaden future research directions in the field.

5.1.3 Co-author analysis

Figure 4 showed the co-occurrence network of authors.The development of the research field of biographical data had benefited from the contributions of many researchers, whose with a large number of publications had a certain influence. As shown in Fig. 4 , the author network in the research field of biographical data had gradually taken shape, and an academic group centered on researchers with a high number of publications had formed. The top ten authors by number of publications were listed in Table 1 (core authors). Schmitt, Oswald and Russell had published more literature and made great contributions to the research in this field. The literature survey revealed that Schmidt and Oswald had a close collaborative relationship, and that they had worked together on a number of literature in the field of biographical information that had been published in core journals(Journal of Applied Psychology).They collected profiles of college students, grouped them based on a range of biographical information data and situational judgment measures, studied the application of contextual and competency profiles to predict college students' performance(Oswald et al.,2004).Toward the development of a biodata measure and situational judgment scales as predictors of college student performance(Schmitt and Bradburn,2018).Both authors could be seen as relative leaders in the field of biographical data. Overall, researchers were loosely connected to each other,but many of them also showed geographical co-operation across regions and schools (Wu and Song, 2020 ).

Core authors were those who had deeper attainments in the research of specific disciplinary fields, obtain relatively more scientific research results, whose academic ideas and perspectives were more novel (Qiu and Li,2012),most of them played a leading role in the process of disciplinary evolution. We adopted Price's law (1962) to determine the core authors in this study, which could be used to judge the research influence of a field or an author, if the number of citations or the number of literature issued in the research results of a certain field or an author conforms to the law, then it meant that the research results of that field or author had been recognized by the academic community to a higher degree, and the specific formulas were as follows:

n max represented the number of literature published by the most prolific author, with at least M published literature required to become a core author. In the range of biographical literature selected in this study, the number of published literature was the largest 9. According to the calculation of the formula, authors who published 3 or more papers could be regarded as core authors, as shown in Table 1 (only the top 10 were given).

5.1.4 Analysis of Highly Cited Literature

Citation frequency was one of the most important indicators of the impact of a literature(Garfield,2000), reflected the extent to which a particular literature contributed to the development of the field and the research work of other researchers. Literature with a high frequency of citation in academia was usually regarded as classic, which had guided significance and practical value for research in the field. To improve the science and accuracy of research in the field of biographical data, Table 2 only showed the 8 literature with high citation frequency. Mael was the most cited author with 3 publications in 5 years, which was closely related to his constant attention to the dynamic development of biographical data. The most highly cited literature was Oswald's 2004 literature "Developing a Biodata Measurement and Situational Judgment Scale as a Predictor of College Student Achievement"(Oswald et al.,2004), the research content and ideas of this highly cited literature provided some support for the development of biographical data in the international arena. This literature was also cited in the literature jointly published by Oswald and Schmitt at a later stage, which showed that Oswald had deep attainments in the field of biographical data. The results of the analysis were basically consistent with the results of the core authors who published literature in the field of biography.

5.1.5 Co-institution analysis

The study utilized CiteSpace to get the knowledge diagram of institution co-occurrence network as shown in Fig. 5 , a relatively large-scale cooperation network among international issuers had basically taken shape. Michigan State Univ (Michigan State University), CUNY (City University of New York), and Univ Georgia (University of Georgia) had issued more literature and were closely connected with other institutions, which showed the trend that the core institution took the lead in driving the development of other institutions.

Also through the Price's law to calculate the core issuing institutions, Michigan State University issued 16 literature as the top distributing organization, which would be brought into the formula to obtain the amount of literature issued ≥ 4 institutions as the core issuing institutions, through the Table 3 could be seen that the core institutions include Michigan State University, the City University of New York, the University of Georgia and other 13 research institutions. The total number of literature issued by all institutions was 552,the core institutions published 74 publications, accounting for 15.9 per cent of the total. It showed that some universities had realized the importance of biographical data as a research direction.

5.2 A hot research topic

5.2.1 Keyword co-occurrence analysis

Keyword co-occurrence mapping adopted the principle of co-occurrence analysis to determine the relationship between different topics, the connection between keywords, based on the co-occurrence of words or noun phrases in the literature. The specific operation was to set the time span to 1951–2022, time slice to 1 year, Node Selection to "Keywords" and threshold to "TOP50" in CiteSpace for the visualization and analysis. The keyword co-occurrence diagram of biographical data was formed in Fig.  6 , which analyzed the research hotspots in the field of biographical data through the co-occurrence of keywords. Each of the circles in the diagram represented a keyword, and a larger node meant that the keyword appears more frequently, which indicated that the related content had received more attention in the field of biographical data. The line between the nodes represented the number of occurrences of the keyword, the more occurrences and the thicker the line, meant that the keywords were more closely related to each other. Mediated centrality is an indicator in social network analysis, which is used to measure the importance of a node in a social network. The mediator centrality ≥ 0.1 is the key node, running CiteSpace to get the data information to form the following Table  4 .

The keywords "validity", "job performance", "personality", "biodata" and other keywords had large nodes, high frequency, high mediator centrality as seen in Fig. 6 ,they belonged to the structural dimensions of biographical data, and were the research hotspots in the field of biographical data. It was not difficult to see "validity" had the highest frequency and mediated centrality from Table 4 , indicating that the research on issues related to the validity of biographical data was the focus of research in the field of biographical data, which generated high impact in the field. Van Iddekinge had used meta-analysis to verify the validity of enterprises' use of pre-employment work experience as a criterion for predicting employee turnover and performance(Van Iddekinge,2019), Dean verified the validity and low adverse impact of biographical data as a selection criterion by examining the differential responses of different races to biographical data(Dean,2013).

5.2.2 Keyword Cluster Analysis

For a clearer presentation of the refinement of the research fields to which the keywords belonged, the keyword clustering group was formed using the LLR algorithm on the basis of the keyword co-occurrence diagram formed by CiteSpace, and the maximum number of keyword clustering labels was 8. Q value and S value was used to measure the literature's research indexes respectively, on behalf of the "theme - word association strength "quality and quantity. Q value in the [0,1) interval, Q value > 0.3 on behalf of the generated clustering diagram network structure is obvious, clustering effect is good; S value reflects the homogeneity of the clustering diagram, S value > 0.5 shows that the generated clustering diagram is appropriate, S > 0.7 proves that the clustering diagram is very reliable(Chen et al.,2014).Such as Fig. 7 , this study drew a core set of WoS data Q = 0.5115 and S = 0.8041 in the literature clustering diagram, the keyword clustering diagram network structure was reliable and real, could be divided into specific clusters.

In order to summarize the main research in the field of biographical data research, the overall clustering results were divided and could be summarized into the following three aspects.

(A) Research on the utility of biographical data

The research on the utility of biographical data had achieved relatively fruitful results, in which the research on biographical scales was favored. As another form of expression of biographical data, biographical scale is highly malleable, it can be changed freely for different industries, different objects and different situations, which could help researchers carry out customized analysis and accurate research. Baehr, Williams used the biographical data scale to analyze the sales managers and salesmen in 1968,summarized the qualities of excellent sales talents(Baehr and Williams,1968).Schoenfeldt analyzed the characteristics of good employees by conducting a survey of employees and found that employees with good qualities had many biographical information in common. Through the study of the personal characteristics of outstanding talents, it helped to reveal the internal factors and external conditions for their better performance (achievements) and how to cultivate their excellent qualities in the future, while learning from the experience and skills of outstanding talents, they could better explore and give full play to their personal potentials and achieved better development in the workplace and life(Schoenfeldt,1999).The application field of biographical data had been broadening from the initial human resources field to education and other fields in recent years. Smith, Cirllo compiled a biographical scale for predicting the academic performance of college students. In summary, biographical data played an important role in realizing talent analysis and predicting academic performance. The application of biographical scales had made a certain contribution to the development of biographical data utility research(Cirllo and Smith,2008).

(B) Research on the structural dimension of biographical data

The structural dimensions of biographical data contained elements such as basic information, personal experience (education, work), health status, values, character traits, family situation, interpersonal relationships. Which could be reflected in the clustering of the formation of words such as performance, decision-making, academic achievement, it was not difficult to see that similar words account for the vast majority of the keywords, the research on the structural dimensions of the biographical data had always been a popular issue. Owens early used a catalog of history items compiled with Albright and Glennon to study the structural dimensions of biographical questionnaires, the questionnaire includes 13 broad categories, 638 questions about life events, Owens compiled a questionnaire with the items therein to predict the academic performance, adaptability, academic achievement of college students,and the predicted results were reasonable (Owens and Schoenfeldet,1979).Child and Klimoski based on Owens' study, summarized the biographical data dimensions as: social orientation, economic stability, work ethic orientation, academic achievement, self-confidence. Used these five dimensions to predict work success, personal success, professional success, were able to effectively predict performance behavior (Childs and Klimoski,1986). Becton found through their study that the biographical questionnaire research method was effective in predicting behaviors such as tardy behavior, work errors, and disciplinary infractions as well as overall performance of nursing staff(Becton et al.,2012). Russell explored the application of biographical data in the selection of top corporate executives, biographical data could help decision makers better understand the characteristics of the relevant characters in order to achieve optimal decision-making, a five-year tracking study found that the competency of executives selected using the biographical data method was higher(Russell et al.,1990).

(C) Research on the advantages of biographical data

Biographical data was widely recognized as a reliable and valid assessment tool, mainly because of its high reliability, high validity and ability to predict multiple validity scales (Liu and Wu,2016). The advantages of biographical data had been explored in comparative studies of its incremental and progressive validity with other assessment methods, such as the Cognitive Abilities Test, the General Mental Abilities Test (GMA), and the Big Five Personality Structures Test (FFM).Incremental validity revealed the predictive power of biographical data, and progressive validity reflected the accuracy of biographical data prediction. By taking stock of the relevant literature, the high incremental validity of biographical data could be reflected in the prediction of job performance, training results, student performance and other validity scales. Allworth and Hesketh used a biographical scale to test the employees in the hotel industry, analyzed and predicted the incremental validity of the biographical data in the three dimensions of job performance (task, scenario, adaptability) from the perspective of cognitive abilities(Allworth and Hesketh,2000). Karas and West found higher incremental validity of biographical instruments for predicting and evaluating job performance compared to other traditional tests(Karas and West,1999).Pierce investigated the biographical information of the trainees who participated in the traffic control training and found that the training results (including training results) of the trainees were significantly correlated with four factors: AT-SAT scores, age, math scores, and whether they held police certificates(Pierce et al.,2013). Kilcullen suggested that biographical data had greater incremental validity and were more effective than traditional personality tests in predicting student performance in school(Kilcullen et al.,1995).Biographical data also had a number of advantages that made them a valid and reliable assessment tool,the questionares on general aptitude tests were usually written in English, and cultural or linguistic differences may lead to inaccurate test results. Biographical data can reduce the impact of these differences and provide a truer picture of the individual, which has a strong theoretical basis in academic research and is safer and more reliable to use.

5.2.3 Keyword burst

Keyword citation bursts refer to keywords that were cited over a period of time, lasting a year or even several years. Burstness was selected for keyword outburst analysis in the control page of CiteSpace to form Fig. 8 . Keyword outburst detection could intuitively show the keywords that occur repeatedly in a certain period(Chen,2016), showing the rise and fall of keywords.

Judging from the beginning year of keyword emergence in the literature keyword emergence diagram, "accuracy" was an early hotspot. In the study of biographical data, reliability and authenticity of the description of events and facts, it was very important to avoid personal opinions, misleading information and one-sided statements when filling in biographical information. In recent years, "China" and "strategy" had become a new research hotspot. The reason may be that China gradually attached importance to biographical data, biographical data information was widely used in enterprises or organizations. In natural language processing of biographical data, researchers may extract the decisions of the people in the biographical data to explore their values, ideas, or personal beliefs. From the perspective of keyword emergence strength, the highest efficacy was "9.11". "Self-efficacy" was closely related to behavioral performance and significant as a reflection of job performance or personal performance, which was consistent with the direction predicted by the biographical data.

5.3 Analysis of the research process

5.3.1 time zone map analysis.

The time zone diagram generated by Citespace can well reflect the research process in a certain field, help researchers better understand the biographical data and predict the future research direction. Select "Timezone" in Citespace to generate the visual time zone diagram of biographical data, as shown in Fig. 9 below (Before 1991, the literature collection was insufficient to form a visual network, so the analysis began in 1991).

Due to the existence of biographical data at the end of the 19th century, the period from 1991 to 2022 already belonged to the late stage of the development of biographical research, with a large number of literature, mature research results and stable research direction.

As shown in Fig.  2 , the number of personal data releases had risen sharply, showing a clear trend of fluctuation since 1991. Similarly, the number of keywords was also increasing in Fig.  9 . Between 1991–1998, the main method used by researchers to study biographical data was meta-analysis, a systematic approach to statistical analysis that allowed for a large number of analyses from a single study to be statistically analysed and integrated (Glass, 1976 ). In the process of combining with biographical data, biographical data was responsible for collecting and organizing basic information, meta-analysis could synthesize different information, two complement each other to provide a more accurate and comprehensive assessment, most of the related research involved performance prediction and academic analysis such as Vinchur evaluated the predictors of objective and subjective sales performance through meta-analysis, pointed out that biological data measurements had a high predictive effect on the rating criteria(Vinchur et al.,1998).Hough and Oswald found through meta-analysis that undergraduate grade point average predicted many types of job performance(Hough and Oswald ,2000).

From 1999 to 2006, it focused on the exploration of ability qualities, such as "perceptual ability", "cognitive ability", "academic achievement". These terms belonged to various dimensions of biographical data and involved related issues of human resources and education, specifically as follows: (A) In the process of personnel selection, job seekers may choose a job that is similar to their own cognitive ability, which involved many factors such as personal preference, specialty, and educational background(Hough and Oswald ,2000). Biographical data could provide information about individual's abilities and background, which could be used as a reference for job seekers to choose the right job. (B) In the academic admission process to higher education, biographical data information often came in various forms that could be used with other factors to predict a student's future academic and extracurricular achievement (Zhang and Kuncel,2020),which helped schools to understand students more comprehensively and realize fair, just and objective admission decisions.

From 2007 to 2014, terms such as "universities" and "college students" appeared in the keywords. The main application objects of biographical data were college students in this stage. Researchers used biological data to cluster students, the background information and ability in biographical data could be used to predict the income of college students(Schmitt et al.,2007). Upon graduation from university, students' performance should be evaluated and predicted through cognitive factors (learning ability, intelligence level)and non-cognitive factors(social ability, personality characteristics)to understand students' potential and achievements in academic and career development, in which biographical data could be an effective supplement to students' potential cognitive indicators(Schmitt et al.,2009). It was worth noting that terms such as "gender difference" and "gender" also appeared at this stage. After entering the 21st century, many researchers began to pay attention to the contributions made by women in the social, political and economic fields. Exploring such issues with biographical data was very valuable for us to understand the research of gender difference in education, employment, family, negotiation and other fields. It also provided a valuable reference for policy makers to help promote gender equality and social justice.

The number of keywords had decreased from 2015 to 2022, which was consistent with the situation reflected in the diagram of publication trend. Biographical data had already been applied to the selection of various talents during this period, such as the keywords "democracy" and "leader", precisely because biographical data had been applied to the military field. Arnold had studied the potential characteristics of commanders and their work efficiency in the battlefield, the discussion results had certain significance for the study of conflict and bureaucracy(Arnold et al.,2020). "inequality" and other words were inseparable from the research on issues related to gender difference, which was a supplement to the previous stage of research. Under the premise of gender homogeneity, Kwiek and Roszka conducted large-scale research on male-female cooperation to explore the respective effects of biological age, academic status, academic discipline, average journal reputation and institution type on the proportion of same-sex cooperation(Kwiek and Roszka,2021).Gender homogeneity had proved to be stronger among men at the level of academic research. Attention should be paid to gender homogeneity in order to achieve gender diversity and peace in the future.

6 Conclusion and respect

This study summarized the current literature characteristics, research hotspots, and research progress in the field of biographical data through the econometric analysis of the Web of Science core set database literature and visualization analysis with the help of CiteSpace , and drew the following conclusions.

We collected 464 literature from Web of Science core set database from 1951 to 2022, The number of publications had increased considerably since 1992,the rapid development of information technology and the establishment of international databases made the collection and analysis of biographical data more efficient may be an important reason for the increase in the number of publications. Only three journals in the sample literature collected published more than 10 articles on biographical information, only 10 authors were considered core authors in the field, largely from Europe and the United States, which suggested that the field of biographical data may be a relatively small and specialized field. And while only a handful of journals and researchers from Europe and the United States had focused on publishing articles related to biographical data, due to the specificity of the field and the limitation of the research target audience. Other journals and researchers had paid relatively little attention to this field, and the above characteristics could also be seen from the distribution of literature citations and issuing organizations.

According to the research hotspots of biographical data, this study found that the dimensional and structural analyses of biographical data had been the hotspots of research, and the way of research development was mostly based on comparative research, which compared the biographical data with other assessment tools to prove the science, comprehensiveness and accuracy of the biographical data. In the research process, biographical scales had been widely used,and made the basic data more three-dimensional and improving the validity of measurement. From the burst detection diagram, "China" was a newly emerging hot word in recent years, which may be due to the fact that Chinese enterprises and governmental organizations were gradually active in the field of biographical data application, the biographical data had been widely adopted in knowledge management, talent recruitment, and marketing as a measurement method, the research trend of biographical data in the future had a strong connection with China.

Based on the research process, most of the research conducted in the field of biographical data in the past three decades had been on the predictive outcomes and structural dimensions of biographical data, and the research in recent years had involved gender differences and issues related to the military field, generally no innovative research content had appeared. In the future, countries need to build more academic connection and learn from each other to accelerate the dissemination of knowledge, and promote the development of innovation in the field of biographical data.

With high credibility and wide coverage, biographical data provided us with a lot of basic data, which reduced the impact of cross-cultural differences, but a lot of issues should be optimised, as described below .

(A) Authenticity, biographical data in the preparation process was largely influenced by the subjective will of the respondents, language expression, memory and other factors, and there may also be falsification and forgery in the preparation of the information, the participants were biased to give answers that meet the expectations of the community in order to increase the chances of being selected, which leaded to distortion of the results of the assessment. Therefore, editors should place objective, discrete, verifiable, and low job-related questions as much as possible when designing the questions, so that candidates could not easily notice the relationship between the options and the scores, but the raters had the criteria for the answers, thus reducing the possibility of answer forgery (Zhang and Wu,2009). The preparation of biographical questionnaires required professional assistance if necessary (Li and Che,2006) .

(B) Privacy and security, biographical data collected a rich variety of information and a large amount of information, which involved life, work, family and other aspects of information, the data if not properly protected may be invaded by foreign viruses, resulting in the leakage of personal information, so a series of measures should be taken in the future, to establish a sound security protection system. The establishment of a specialized regulatory body and relevant laws and regulations, the implementation of the principle of lawful management and protection, to protect the privacy of the user.To be fully open and transparent, provide users with complete instructions on the use of data and operating guidelines, make clear the purposes and methods of data collection, processing and use, allow users to independently choose whether or not to participate in the evaluation, and provide supervision and feedback in the course of the project, improve and optimise the evaluation system continuously. Adhere to the principles of science and reasonableness, management in accordance with the law, openness and transparency, to better address the issue of privacy and security of personal information of biographical data.

(C) Quantification issues, biographical data involved the complexity of many factors made it difficult to meet the demand for quantification, was currently a common problem facing the field, because in the use of biographical data questionnaires collected text-based data, to enable the use of harmonized standards for assessment and screening, the need to quantify the text into numbers (Zhang and Wu,2009). The quantification process was difficult. Firstly, biographical data generally contained a lot of subjective information, such as personal experiences and feelings, the information is private, it was difficult to quantify its value; Secondly, the data sources were different, containing a large number of user-provided information was not uniform, and it was difficult to standardize the calculation and comparison of assigned scores; Finally, the cost of storing biographical data was expensive, the relevant departments needed to consume more funds and manpower. The introduction of high technology in the future is recommended to mine meaningful features from the huge amount of data to further optimise and improve the assessment system to meet the more complex and changing needs in the future. Also actively exploring interdisciplinary cooperation and taking advantage of the cross-fertilisation of multiple disciplines to jointly promote the continuous innovation and optimisation of the assessment system.

Declarations

Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in this study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Author Contributions

Xiaoqing Xu: conceived and designed the manuscript, ran the software, analyzed and interpreted the results, collected the literature and processed the graphics and tables and wrote the first draft of the manuscript.   Guandong Song: proofread the first draft, made revisions and controlled the quality of the article.   All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This project was supported by the Science Research Project of Liaoning Department of Education under Grant LJKMR20220955.

Publisher ’ s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers.    Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Acknowledgements

Thank you very much for choosing my article, which is the best incentive for me.   After that, I will continue to deepen my research in this field, and I hope we can have more cooperation opportunities.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

We received written informed consent from all participants,The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Institutional Review Board of Bioethics Committee of Northeastern University.

Consent for publication

we received written informed consent from all participants.

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Additional Declarations

No competing interests reported.