The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) is pleased to offer the fifth edition of the Principles for the Validation and Use of Personnel Selection Procedures, which was approved by the APA Council of Representatives in August 2018 as an authoritative guidelines document for employee selection testing and an official statement of the APA. Over a three-year period, the Principles Revision Committee updated this document from the fourth edition to be consistent with the 2014 Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, invited commentary from SIOP and APA that informed subsequent revisions, and solicited a thorough legal review.

Research collaborations are two-way streets. To obtain support from organizations, academics must communicate the value of their research projects to the stakeholders. In their focal article, Lapierre et al., (2018) described this process as the academic “sales pitch”, one that must be “short yet attention grabbing” (p.20). Academic research in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology, however, is rooted in esoteric jargon (e.g., validity and reliability) and unconvincing evidence (e.g., r and r2) (Highhouse, Brooks, Nesnidol, & Sim, 2017; Rynes, 2009). These concepts are difficult for non-academics to understand and may even undermine the value of our work (Brooks, Dalal, & Nolan, 2014; Kuncel & Rigdon, 2012; Mattern, Kobrin, Patterson, Shaw, & Camara, 2009). CEOs and other senior leaders often have limited time, attention, and expertise to process your pitch: A bad one could effectively derail the collaboration before it even began.

As faculty in master's industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology graduate programs, we read with great interest the focal article on initiating and maintaining partnerships with organizations (Lapierre et al., 2018). We applaud the efforts of the authors to present guidelines and recommendations for successful applied research in organizations. Although Lapierre et al. directed their recommendations primarily to doctoral faculty and their students, there currently are 159 I-O psychology master's programs listed on the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) webpage (http://my.siop.org/GTP). Because of the applied nature of most master's programs, by necessity we work continuously to gain entry into and partner with organizations for internship placements, applied course projects, and applied service opportunities. We, along with other master's faculty colleagues, have published and presented on the topic of partnering with organizations (e.g., Shoenfelt, 2003; Shoenfelt, Kottke, & Stone, 2012; Shoenfelt et al., 2015; Shoenfelt, Stone, & Kottke, 2013; Shoenfelt, Walker, Long, Smith, & Whelan, 2012; Stone, Shoenfelt, Huffcut, Morganson, & Frame, 2018; Stone, Shoenfelt, Morganson, Moffett, & Van Hein, 2017). In this response, we offer an analogous perspective from the master's level based on tacit knowledge garnered from more than a century of combined experience. We note that many of the recommendations in this focal article likewise surfaced in our work. Here we highlight the challenges unique to master's-level and teaching-intensive faculty in implementing these recommendations. In our response, we embrace Lewin's (1946) definition of action research that there is no action without research and no research without action. Thus, we broadly define applied research as asking an important applied question and systematically collecting data to answer that question in a manner in which the results inform organizational action (whether or not it results in a peer-reviewed publication).

The focal article (Reynolds, McCauley, Tsacoumis, & the Jeanneret Symposium Participants, 2018) discusses the accepted wisdom and challenges surrounding the assessment and development of senior leaders. Specific to our response, the authors highlight the importance of rigorous assessment and the relevance of accounting for contextual factors. The present response integrates both of these topics by advocating the use of parallel leader and organizational culture assessments to guide continued leader development. By explicitly measuring leadership and contextual factors, we expand on the contextual focus brought up in the focal article while providing guidance to practitioners on how to utilize the framework presented.

Lapierre et al. (2018) provide a compelling set of reasons why conducting research in organizational settings should include investing time and energy to foster and promote enhanced relationships with organizational stakeholders. We agree that managing research partnerships carefully is paramount to creating the conditions necessary to implement rigorous methodology and collect the data needed to test theory-based hypotheses. However, we believe that Lapierre et al.’s argument should be taken further.

During our tenure on Google's People Analytics team, we have participated in dozens of research partnerships. Some have been wildly successful, resulting in changes to our own organizational practices or policies as well as academic publications. Other partnerships have been less fruitful, largely because both science and organizations are messy and unpredictable. But no matter the outcome, nearly all of our partnerships have come about in the same way—a way overlooked by the authors in their article (Lapierre et al., 2018).

In addition to the suggestions made by the authors of the focal article (Lapierre et al., 2018), it is also important for academics to market themselves and keep their information up to date. As a practitioner, I sometimes end up working with interesting data sets worth publishing but lack the time and resources to complete the entire publication progress. There are also times when I am in need of a targeted intervention and would be willing to work with academic researchers in a mutually beneficial arrangement. As such, I need to be able to find you. This commentary expands on the focal article by providing some tips on how to be found by practitioners and increase the likelihood that a practitioner will contact you. Though networking is also of vital importance in this area, the authors of the focal article covered that well; as such, no further discussion of it will take place here.

Air pollution is a persistent and well-established public health problem in India: emissions from coal-fired power plants have been associated with over 80,000 premature deaths in 2015. Premature deaths could rise by four to five times this number by 2050 without additional pollution controls. We site a model 500 MW coal-fired electricity generating unit at eight locations in India and examine the benefits and costs of retrofitting the plant with a flue-gas desulfurization unit to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. We quantify the mortality benefits associated with the reduction in sulfates (fine particles) and value these benefits using estimates of the value per statistical life transferred to India from high income countries. The net benefits of scrubbing vary widely by location, reflecting differences in the size of the exposed population. They are highest at locations in the densely populated north of India, which are also among the poorest states in the country.