PsyAsia International is pleased to once again be supporting Singapore’s Human Resource professionals as a sponsor of the Singapore Human Resources Institute’s Annual Human Resource Congress.
The Singapore HR Congress and Business-Connect Exposition 2010 will address the newly derived term of HR TransmutationTM and explore the topic in deeper context. The current economic churning has made it explicitly clear that industry is not just facing another downturn but it is accompanied by impactful structural, demographic and mindset changes across industry and top management cannot afford to respond with anything less than a complete overhaul of the system to survive and sustain. Renowned speakers and leaders from the HR fraternity will share their experiences and provide useful insights on the know-how of managing paradoxes in a turbulent world.
PsyAsia’s clients are entitled to a 35% discount on the price of conference tickets. Please contact us in the first instance to avail of this special offer.
“A strong and capable HR community can be the catalyst and change agents to initiate and implement people development efforts in organisations, and help build stronger capabilities amongst our business leaders and managers.”
PM Lee Hsien Loong
11th World HR Congress 2006 organised by SHRI
PsyAsia International is Asia’s leading independent distributor of Psychometric Tests of Personality and Aptitude. From offices across Asia, including Singapore and Hong Kong, our psychologists assist the world’s top organisations and local governments to recruit, select, assess and retain the best employees. Our services are only offered by fully registered organisational psychologists with years of experience in their field. PsyAsia also offers world-class training in Psychometric Testing in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Online.
Identity Psychometric Personality Questionnaire Webinar
Attendees will be introduced to this personality assessment which produces the most comprehensive assessment of personality on the market. Key decision-makers will also have an opportunity to trial Identity.
-Overview of the Identity Self Perception Questionnaire
-Scales of Identity
-Derived Psychological Models
-Identity Reports
-Identity Online
-Benefits of Identity
-Applications of Identity
-Comparison with other leading questionnaires
-Identity Accreditation
Click here to register
The Market for Psychometrics in Singapore
There are so many Psychometric Tests on the market in Singapore now, the task of choosing the right one is not easy. Choice is always a good thing, however as humans we often look for easy or stereotypical ways of making those choices and they are not always the best ones to make. For example, a client of ours was preparing for an upcoming team-building session. He approached us asking if we had a certain test that he could use in that session. Our answer was that we don’t supply that test for various very good reasons. The client’s response was “but so many people use it”. This is a typical response. Another potential client had been looking around in Singapore for Psychometric Personality Tests to use in his training sessions as an added benefit. He categorically advised us that he was not interested in validity and was looking for something simple and cheap! The reality here is that at best he is wasting his time and the time of those who will complete his tests. At worst and most likely, his trainees will be led to believe things about themselves which frankly may not be true (reliable or valid!).
Science, Psychology, Psychometrics and the Real World of Business
As busy professionals we often assume that if lots of other people are using a test it must be a good one. This is a huge mistake. Our evolution has programmed us to be seduced by glossy advertising materials and confident, friendly salespeople. On the other hand, we have a tendency to be turned off by less glossy scientific figures, statistics and perhaps psychologists such as myself who speak about the science and real value behind a test, its validity! Ultimately then, both our clients and ourselves as psychologists have problems to overcome!!
Psychologists have to be able to explain in more “glossy” terms about the technical properties of a test and our clients, usually the HR and aligned professions, are invited to turn their ears our way for a little while, just long enough to get the notion that there is more to a psychometric test than meets the eye!
Technical Properties of Psychometric Tests
When we talk of the technical properties of a psychometric test, we are referring to things such as its reliability and validity as well as how it was constructed. If a test is constructed well, it will take time. Not months, often years. The test will also evolve over time such that more and validity data will be added to its manuals. This process is costly, hence good tests cost money.
If you come across cheap tests, that should start to ring alarm bells. It’s possible to write a few questions on a napkin in a restaurant and call it psychometric and even try to sell it. If it looks good and the questions look relevant perhaps it will sell and gain a huge following. But how reliable is that test?
In other words, can it provide consistent measurement of your candidate? If your bathroom scales provide different results each time you weight yourself you take them back and say these are not reliable. Likewise with a test, you need to ensure that it is consistently assessing the constructs that it purports to assess. We often come across new clients who are shocked when we tell them that good personality tests often contain around 200 questions. However, buyer beware! We know that the longer the test, the more reliable the results (as long as it is not so long that the candidate falls asleep!).
An unreliable test can not be a valid test, hence reliability is a precursor to validity. However, validity is arguably the most important aspect of a test. You choose to use tests because you want them to illustrate where a candidate stands in terms of their ability or personality or in order to predict how your candidate will perform or behave in a job. The test’s ability to meet this need is referred to as validity.
Some tests on the market are simply more valid that others. In fact, one test in the past year has proven to be more valid than all other tests it was compared with on the market! How come users stay with their current test then? Perhaps because of preference, habit, price, mass-following and so on. However, do ask yourself and your test supplier, how valid is your test – this is the single most important technical property in a psychometric test!
Sometimes tests which are more valid will be more expensive but this makes sense. If a test took a long time to develop, was developed well and by a reputable publisher and is based on well founded theories that have been researched internationally, then surely it is worth paying the extra as such a test will provide an excellent return on investment with its strong validity.
Training to use Psychometric Tests in Singapore
Properly developed psychometric tests require proper training to be used competently. If your test supplier requires that you undergo very limited or no training, this is a reflection of the test as well as their lack of understanding of psychometrics. You need to understand the concepts referred to above, as well as error in testing and how to make decisions based on test results, let alone how to feed back results properly to candidates and decision-makers. The type of questions (i.e., forced choice versus rating scales) will also dictate how you can use the results – you need to be trained to understand this! In some parts of the world (South Africa for example), only psychologists can use psychometric tests. Whilst this is a strict rule, it has its logical basis in how easy it is for untrained professionals to use tests wrongly.
Purchasing Psychometric Tests in Singapore
You may also wish to consider where you purchase your tests from, particularly in Singapore. In recent years we have seen an influx of profiteers in the industry who seek to make money but lack any depth of understanding in psychometrics or psychology at work. This will change in time as psychology in Singapore develops. For now however, be wary of this and we suggest that you only purchase psychometric tests from fully registered organisational psychologists who have a firm grounding in personality, psychometrics and psychology at work and who are answerable to professional competence and ethics boards. Many of those selling psychometric tests in Singapore are simply not answerable to anybody in terms of their conduct or competence. You can therefore not be certain that any advice they provide is relevant, up-to-date or will work in your organisation.
There are many more things to be aware of when choosing psychometric tests in Singapore. We cannot entertain them all here due to space constraints. You may wish to look out for training courses in Psychometric Assessment such as our our Psychometric Assessment at Work training which leads to the internationally recognised British Psychological Society Level A and B Certificates of Competence in Occupational Testing. Such courses will prepare you further for choosing the right test and therein avoid costly selection and development mistakes. Look for courses run by experts in psychometrics who are based in Singapore and hence have a strong understanding of test use aligned with local culture, laws and practice.
Note: some Singapore firms will ship in overseas trainers to run psychometric training. We suggest you avoid this training reseller model given that the facilitator is based overseas and is thus likely to lack knowledge of the Singapore business/legal and cultural environment for Psychometric Testing.
This article is Copyright PsyAsia International Pte Ltd.
It was originally written for Human Resources Magazine in Singapore
A shorter version of the article appears in the magazine’s November 2009 issue
The first thing to remember is that if you are using a purely ipsative personality test then you should not be comparing test results between candidates. Ipsative tests are self-referencing – they are comprised of force-choice items. They are useful in coaching, team-building and career guidance, but should not be used alone in recruitment and selection scenarios.
Some tests on the market, such as the Saville Consulting Wave or the Apollo Profile are joint normative-ipsative tests and these would be fine to be used to compare between candidates. A normative test is one which allows the candidate to respond based on the strength of their agreement or disagreement with a statement. The end results are then compared with a group of similar others who have previously taken the test (the norm group).
Purely normative tests such as the Identity Self-Perception Questionnaire would also be good to use for comparing candidates. Aptitude tests are by their nature normative tests and hence can be used to compare between candidates.
So, let’s assume that we have administered a normative personality assessment to two candidates and we are particularly interested in finding a candidate with a high tendency towards creative thinking. We have decided to use a personality assessment alongside other means of assessment including an abstract reasoning test to assess this. We ask Lee and Jane to complete both of these tests. These are their scores on the test scale of interest (presented in sten scores):
Lee
Creative thinking:8
Jane
Creative thinking:6
Now, keeping in mind that we would never use test results on their own to make a decision, let’s look at how most decision-makers would approach the above scenario based on test results alone for simplicity.
It obviously appears that Lee is somewhat better suited to the position than Jane.
However, in psychometric testing just as in any assessment procedure undertaken for Human Resources, there is always a chance of error. In fact, it’s more than chance! We know that error is always present.
When interviewing somebody the error is present, when running an assessment center the error is also present. Likewise, error is also present in the use of psychometric tests. Given a desire to be scientific, reputable test publishers will actually assess their tests for error.
One way of doing this is to ask a group of respondents to complete the test today and to invite them back a month later to complete the same test. Ignoring practice effects (which are controlled for), the expectation is that there should be a strong relationship between how a candidate scored at time one and how they score at time two. The idea is that test results should remain consistent over time. Psychometricians refer to this as test-retest reliability.
We hope for high test-retest reliability and we really should be choosing tests which have proven high levels. If we don’t we will have little confidence in test results and be very limited in terms of how we use them.
The assessment for error that shows us how much confidence we can have in test scores is referred to as the standard error of measurement (SEM). It uses an equation to ascertain how confident we can be that a candidate’s test result is a reflection of their true score as opposed to their true score PLUS error.
The equation is very simple, it is just: Standard Deviation multiplied by the square root of 1 minus the test-retest reliability of the assessment. If you don’t like statistics, sorry – they really are necessary to use tests competently!
If you choose a reputable test, often the publisher will quote the SEM in the test manual. If not, you can use the equation above to calculate it. You would use the standard deviation for your scale of interest taken from the manual alongside the test-retest from the manual (note…if your publisher fails to provide these figures you should probably not be using their tests!!).
The point is that the lower the SEM (or the higher the test-retest reliability), the better. Why?
Going back to Lee and Jane above. If our test has an SEM of 1.5 STENS, this would mean that we are 68% confident that Lee’s true score for the creative thinking scale is between 6.5 and 9.5 (we add and subtract the SEM from the observed score). It would also mean that we are 68% certain that Jane’s true score lies between 4.5 and 7.5 on the same test.
Now we can see that some doubt begins to arise as to whether the differences observed between the two candidates is as a result of a real score difference or an error difference (i.e., the true score for both candidates could be 7!). We don’t want to make a mistake and choose the wrong candidate, so let’s now look at how we can compare the differences.
We can take this further and calculate something called the standard error of difference. This tells us how confident we can be that there is a true difference between the scores of the two candidates. Because both candidates completed the same test, we use the following equation: SEdiff= the square root of (1.414 * SEM squared of the test in question).
Let’s say that our test has an SEM of 1.5 STENS. Using the SEdiff equation, we get a figure of 3.18 for the SEdiff. This represents our “critical figure”. It means that the difference between the candidate’s scores must be at least 3.18 before we can conclude there is a true score difference.
In our example, the difference between the candidate’s scores is only 2. Hence we cannot conclude there is a true score difference. The implication for selection is that we should not (everything else being equal) select one candidate over the other because, although we observe differences, the differences may not be true differences, they may be simply error differences.
Note that if we choose a more reliable test it will reduce the SEM. So for example, if we have an SEM of 1 STEN, our SEdiff for the above example would be 1.19. In this case, since the difference between the candidate’s scores is 2 STENS, we could conclude that there is a true difference. We would be at least 68% certain and almost 96% certain. We won’t go into degrees of certainty in this article, but the point is made!
In summary, do not compare candidate’s test results without a knowledge of the test’s reliability and standard deviation or in other words, do not ignore the SEM. Every assessment technique has an error variable. Competent users of psychometric tests will be aware of this and ensure they do not make the wrong selection decision or give incorrect development/careers advice on the basis on error rather than true score differences.
This article is (C) 2009 PsyAsia International. Some websites have been given permission to post this article. The article must always contain our copyright, publisher details and a live link to our website. Please do not violate these terms.
Saville Consulting Wave® Professional Styles measures motives, talents, preferred culture and competency potential in one dynamic online questionnaire. It is designed for use in both selection and development, transforming the assessment process with the sophisticated use of internet technology and powerful models of effectiveness in the workplace. This comprehensive global questionnaire measures the 4 clusters, 12 sections, 36 dimensions and 108 facets of the Wave hierarchical model. Average completion time is 40 minutes.
In a 2008 co-validation study, Wave Professional Styles, outperformed the OPQ32i, NEO-PI-R, Hogan Personality Inventory 16PF5 and 15FQ+ in predicting both work competencies and overall global measures of performance. Additionally the Wave outperformed tests that should not really be used in recruitment and selection, such as the MBTI and DiSC.
For users, this higher validity enables:
- better predictions of performance
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For details of the scientific validation study, please click here.
We are pleased to offer a free trial of the Saville Wave Focus Styles Questionnaire to the major HR decision-maker in Asian organisations. The trial is open until 15 August and to the first 100 applicants. Please send your full details to our Psychometrics Team by clicking here. Please provide the following:
Your full name:
Your corporate email address (free email accounts such as yahoo, gmail etc. not accepted):
Your job title:
Your company name:
Your location:
Kindly note that requests for trials from non-decision makers, those not based in Asia, those who provide inaccurate, fake date or non-corporate email addresses or those whose organisations have previously trialled the Wave will not be entertained. Thank you for your understanding.
For details on professional training to use the Saville Consulting Wave, please click on the links below:
Psychometric Assessment at Work Course – BPS Level A and B – Asia
Saville Consulting Wave Conversion Course – Asia