Lisa-Anne Knowles
Contributor

In the Caribbean, we often hear older persons making statements like: "My spirit doesn't take to ..." What those individuals are doing is making a judgement about a person based on intuition, past experience or even stereotypes that they may have. Psychometric testing however is one way to measure different aspects of a person's personality, ability, aptitude, or psychological well-being, without relying on unverifiable personal feelings.

Deciphering Psychometrics
Not many people understand what psychometric testing is all about. I felt the same challenge when I first returned to the Region from the UK. I used to refer to it as personality and ability testing, so that persons would more quickly understand what I was talking about without me going into the details of a Psychometrics 101 mini-course. The awareness is growing now that companies are trying to streamline businesses. They are getting "in tune" with the need for Psychometrics - but in most cases, they are still not fully aware of what it is all about.

Psychometric testing is more than just ability and personality testing, even though they are two of the more popular focus areas used in schools and the workplace. What psychometric testing inevitably does is provide a structured means by which to measure ability, personality, aptitude, etc.

Usages
Individuals may use the results for personal development, career choice and counselling. Businesses can use these assessments to assist in selection (for hiring or redundancy), promotions and staff development.

These tests can be effectively used by schools to determine if children have behaviour disorders, learning deficits or gifting. At the tertiary level psychometric testing can be used for the selection process before students are accepted into their institutions. There are many more ways that we can use structured psychometric assessments. The ones outlined here are however the more commonly used methods.

Moving with technology
Traditionally, paper and pencil tests were used with psychometric assessments. Nowadays, with everything being computerised, we have online assessments as well, which help to reduce time, cost, and administration and travel expenses. Psychometric assessments can be subjective, where the individual can follow the line of questioning in the items.

Objective assessments however may have components so designed that the person doing the assessment does not necessarily understand what the test is seeking to discover based on the content of the items. Objective testing is often more reliable, but both methods have merit depending on the context in which they will be used.

Lisa-Anne Knowles is the Chief Consultant at QOHC a people and business development company. Website: www.qohconsultancy.com. Email: icrc@qohconsultancy.com. Phone: 620-9056, 791-8188