This is one of those terms which sound really scientific and impressive. What exactly is it?
Well, it is indeed something that has rigorous science behind it, and it can really give impressive results normally.
The term psychometric testing means, simply put, the science of understanding a person’s qualities, and mental make-up, and skills by analysing his or her answers to a specific set of questions. There are various kinds of psychometric tests available, and they measure a wide variety of attributes.
For instance, Test A could assess a person’s suitability for a direct selling assignment. So, it may have questions designed to understand how well the person can handle rejection, how persistent he can be in following up with a sales prospect, how much energy he can bring to the job, how good he is at negotiation and so on.
And is this done by asking the person to rate himself? Or, by some kind of role-play?
Neither. It is done by asking a series of questions which are related to the various attributes of a good salesperson. But these questions are certainly not direct questions. They very skilfully worded indirect questions.
Wouldn’t that be very difficult to do? Is a lot of effort required to develop a psychometric test?
Absolutely! There are several steps involved in developing a good psychometric test. To continue with the same hypothetical example, the first step would be to determine what the attributes that a successful salesperson must possess are. This step itself requires studying the cases of a large number of successful salespersons, generating some hypotheses, and then selecting the attributes through an iterative process.
The next step would be to develop a set of questions / statements that do a good job of capturing these attributes. Just for the sake of example, let us assume that the ability to handle rejection has been identified as a key attribute. Then we may want to capture this dimension as a suitably worded indirect question. As can be seen even from this simple example, it is not an easy task to develop the right way to capture a dimension.
Once a method has been developed, it needs to be tested out on known salespersons (both good and bad) to see how accurately it can perform. In other words, the test must correctly identify a good salesperson and a bad salesperson. This phase of development uses the statistical testing tools extensively. The development also needs to undergo reliability and validity testing; and I am not going to go into what those words mean for now!
The test is ready for use in the outside world only after all these stages are complete.
Yes, it does sound really tough. How can we use such tests?
These tests are very useful in three situations
For counselling people coming out of college about their careers; the appropriate tests can tell them what kinds of work will suit them best for recruiting people – here the company would be asking prospective candidates to take the tests
For recruiting people — here the company would be asking prospective candidates to take the tests
For assessing people for promotion from one role to another – such as a promotion to a role as team leader from team member
Is there anything we can try? Just to see how they work?
Sure, you could just go to the Web and check out some of the free tests available online. Just two words of caution — answer each question totally honestly, and don’t be shocked when the test accurately describes you!
Some of the well- known tests worldwide are the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and the Firo-B etc. Some of the famous behavioural scientists who have left their imprint on this field are Francis Gaton, Spearman, Thurstone, Stanford and Stevens
There are also some Indian organisations that are doing pioneering work in this area, and hopefully their work will soon be commercially recognised and popular.
To read more from the FundaMental section, click here .