Psychometric Tests

Authors Avatar

BA Business and Management

Behavioural Studies

Assignment 1:  Psychometric Tests; a critical evaluation

“Evaluate the uses and limitations of psychometric assessment tests and questionnaires for organisational decision-making”

Introduction

Psychometric tests developed quickly during the 1980s and 1990s and nowadays, it is very commonly used by many organisations for making decisions on selection and promotion.  “In the UK, about 75% of medium to large sized organizations use them as part of their selection procedure alongside interviews or other face-to-face assessment techniques.”  (Website:   Accessed 30/11/2005)  The psychometric tests are a useful tool for understanding more about the candidates, and finding out their aptitude and personality to support the organisation making prediction about the person’s behaviour or work performance in the future.

Types of psychometric tests

 “A key feature of all psychometric tests is that they have to fulfil two principal criteria in use: reliability, ie, tests must provide consistent results when measuring the same characteristics, or factors, on two or more occasions, usually on a test-retest basis; validity, i.e they must be able to measure what they claim to measure.”  (G A Cole, Organisational Behaviour, 1995, Continuum)  The psychometric tests fall into two types:

  • Aptitude tests – Measure a person’s potential rather than knowledge and how well they can learn new skills to cope with the job.  The tests mostly focus on the person’s numerical, verbal, non-verbal and spatial ability.  It is different to the attainment tests because it helps to predict the performance of the person, whereas the attainment tests focus on the person’s achievement in the past.  However, there is a link between the attainment tests and ability tests because what the person has achieved depends on his/her ability.
  • Personality questionnaires – Focus on the person’s personality, values, interests, etc.  The tests involve finding out and analysing the ways in which people deal with things, their attitude and how they will behave in different situations.  The tests normally don’t have a time limit, and there is no “right” or “wrong” answers.  

Back to 400 BC, Hippocrates from Greece was the first theorist to measure the differences between individuals’ personality.  He believed that individual’s personality or temperament were determined by their bodily fluids or ‘humours’, i.e. yellow bile – choleric – aggressive, excitable, irritable.  Another type theory was developed by William Sheldon (1898-1970,) he believed that the temperament of people were related to their physique, i.e. the ectomorph type, people who are thin, shy, creative and intelligent, the mesomorph type, which are people who are strong, active, brave and assertive, and the endomorpht type, people who are fat, sociable and easy going.  

Join now!

Another example of type theory was created by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung; he focused on how people think.  He created eight psychological types, four Extraverted (E) attitudes plus four Introverted (I) attitudes combine with either thinking (T) or feeling (F), and either sensing (S) or intuition (N); EST, ESF, ENT, ENF, IST, ISF, INT and INF.  His work was later developed by two generations of the Myers-Briggs family, which the MBTI test use one side or other of all four of Jung’s, establish a four-letter code to set up sixteen types of personality.  In addition, one of the most ...

This is a preview of the whole essay