• What are psychometric tools?
• Why use psychometric tools?
• Common myths about psychometric tools
• Using psychometric tools ethically

What are psychometric tools?

Psychometric tools are questionnaires or tests that help businesses to select the right people, facilitate individual and team development, and increase organisational effectiveness.

In the main, they fall into the following categories:

• Personality: powerful methods of predicting how someone will typically behave.
• Ability: measure aptitudes such as how someone will perform when solving problems or reasoning with verbal information; many measure potential rather than current level of knowledge.
• Career interests: help to identify the types of work to which someone would be suited.
• 360-degree feedback: gather feedback on an individual's performance or personal attributes from a range of sources, from juniors to superiors.

A psychometric tool should be:

• Objective: the results obtained from it are not influenced by the administrator's personal preferences or biases.
• Standardised: it is administered and scored according to standard procedures; people's scores on the test are compared to known benchmarks.
• Reliable: it measures in a consistent way.
• Valid: it measures the characteristics that it sets out to measure.
• Discriminating: the test should show clear and meaningful differences between individuals on the behaviour being tested. It should not be discriminatory, unfairly discriminating against any individual on the basis of irrelevant characteristics.

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Why use psychometric tools?

Simply put, because they work.

Individual tests are among the best predictors of job performance and are even more powerful when combined with other tests or interviews. They are proven to:

• Increase objectivity in staff selection and development
• Improve individual and interpersonal effectiveness
• Enhance teamwork and organisational performance
• Improve staff performance, morale and retention.

When used effectively, they also increase the transparency, speed and quality of line-management decisions about people, ensuring that best practices are more readily transferred from HR processes into action.

And they are manifestly not just for use in recruitment. Leadership development, teambuilding and organisational change are just three other contexts where psychometric tools are proven to deliver results.

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Common myths about psychometric tools

• Myth 1: "They're expensive, aren't they?"
  No. There is an initial outlay in training administrators and test interpreters, but running costs are low.
• Myth 2: "They're not cost-effective."
  Their accuracy in predicting job-performance makes them cost-effective – as anyone who knows the costs of recruiting replacement staff will testify.
• Myth 3: "People can fake them."
  Ability tests are extremely difficult to fake and with personality questionnaires there are built-in checks to highlight if this has been attempted.
• Myth 4: "Some people are naturally good at tests."
  Psychometric instruments are not open to any more bias than interviews, where people can be trained in interview technique. People are best prepared by being relaxed and rested on the day of testing.
• Myth 5: "They do not reflect the job."
  Before using any assessment tool, an employer should determine which attributes and competencies are needed for the job. The chosen psychometric assessments should measure these and will therefore reflect and be relevant to the job.
• Myth 6: "They are time-consuming."
  Administering a test or questionnaire varies from ten minutes to over an hour. Often the questionnaires can be administered to many people at the same time, which can make them more time-efficient than other assessment or development methods.
• Myth 7: "They are unfair to people with disabilities."
  It is straightforward to make reasonable adjustments to the assessment process in order to alleviate any potential disadvantage.

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Using psychometric tools ethically

The British Psychological Society and other international bodies have developed guidelines to ensure psychometric instruments are chosen and used correctly by qualified users.

These include the administration of tests under controlled conditions, telling people which tests they will be taking in advance and providing preview or practice materials.

We believe that ethical standards in the use of psychometric tools are vital to protect and preserve respondents' rights, and ultimately to ensure successful use and acceptance of such tools.

As we believe that ethical standards of use should not be optional, we have incorporated these guidelines into our own guidelines for ethical use of tests and questionnaires.

We follow these guidelines, and determine eligibility to purchase psychometric materials on the basis of training and experience. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, the psychometric instruments distributed by OPP are restricted to professionally qualified practitioners who have registered their qualification details with us.

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