Psychometrics 2020: How will online ability and personality testing develop in the coming years

Juho Toivola#hruZurich10.9.2015

Warmup

• How many of you have some time completed a psychometric test?

• How many of you have in your job role administered psychometric tests?

• How many of you think psychometric tests are useful?

Are psychometric tests still relevant?

• Don’t we (HR experts) know better?

• “Cultural fit and group dynamics are more important – testing individuals is old-fashioned”

• “Testing is not a suitable selection method for expert, managerial or leadership roles”

Test technology in 2020

Online is the standard. Pen-and-paper is frowned upon.

Adaptive testing:

- In ability tests: adjusting difficulty level on the go- In personality inventories: forced ranking of behaviors with similar ratings

Mobile. Gamified. Social.

Real-time scoring (example)

Answer API

Score API

Google

Big Data and personality

• Your Facebook profile has more “test items” than any personality test could ever have

• With statistical methods, it is easy to predict your personality traits with high reliability

• Do we need separate tests or should we just request access to personal online data?

Item Response Theory (IRT)

Not all questions have equal weight

Extroversion:• “I like to go to parties”• “I never want to be alone”

Mathematical ability:• “2+2=?”• “23*25+53/24-14=?”

Situational Judgment Tests (SJTs)

• Situational Judgment Tests (SJT’s) assess how you approach situations encountered in the workplace.

• Whilst there is some variation in how they are delivered, they typically present you with a written description of a scenario and ask you to select the appropriate response from a multiple choice list.

• Situational Judgement Tests have high predictive validity, when used correctly

Other interesting developments

• Neurological measurement of emotions and neural correlates of cognitive capacity

• Face recognition technology and machine vision in psychological assessment

• Online-based skills testing (eg. languages, Excel, programming) has become more and more common

Let’s discuss!

Thank you!