PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - psychometric and aptitude tests
View Single Post
Old 29th Jan 2007, 01:25
  #12 (permalink)  
Sunfish
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: moon
Posts: 3,564
Received 90 Likes on 33 Posts
This stuff was done to death about thirty years ago.

First of all, some of the "personality inventory" tools were originally designed to diagnose sick people - ie: For use by people presenting at a hospital with some form of mental condition. Thats why you see questions in them like "I believe life is hopeless and I have no control over what happens to me." (Answer scale from "Agree strongly" to "disagree strongly").

Then there are the persosnlaity type definers like the Myers Briggs Tests that rank you as introvert/extrovert - feeling justifying, etc etc. You can fool these tests easily if you know what the airline is looking for (Hint - they are not looking for brooding introverts with "gut feel" perceptive thinking skills.

Then there are all the proprietary tests designed to provide team players etc. etc. and weed out "bad" personalities. You can fool those too - you get taught it at MBa school but its not that hard.

Some of these test vendors also include trick questions to produce "Lie scores" so that in theory you can pick whop is lieing in the test. Only trouble is that a high lie score actually shows great motivation for wanting to do the job.

The U.S. Supreme Court went through all this a long time ago when "test results" were cited as the reason for racial bias in hiring and promotion decisions. The tests lost.

Aptitude tests - well that is a very different matter.
Sunfish is offline