An Insight into Psychological Tests and Pre-Screening

Psychological tests emerged in the 19th century as a way to measure individual differences and further develop a system of personality classification. In the early 1900’s, psychologists developed tests that intended to measure traits and attitudes. Hugo Munsterberg was one of the first scientists to develop a test that measured psychological traits required for employees. These selection tests were then used by American Tobacco Company in order to select its conductors. Further spread of psychological testing emerged during the World War I. As abilities of soldiers had to be measured, Office of Strategic Services initiated use of testing as part of the selection process of soldiers for special missions.

Projective testing was used in 1920s. As part of this testing, respondents are asked to respond to a vague stimulus; as such, personal fantasies and emotional associations are projected on the stimulus. The stimulus normally was an inkblot that subjects were to describe. Performance situational testing was developed in 1930’s and 1940’s. Under this testing, examinees are placed to life like or stimulated situations designed to provoke evidence of specific features of character, attitudes, and characteristics. At the present moment this type of testing is used to assess an employee’s leadership ability. However, initially these tests were administered to school children in order to identify and measure such behaviour as cheating, stealing, and lying. Further, services developed a performance test as a way to assess emotional and social behaviour. Based on this type of testing, modern rating scales and standardized questionnaires were developed that are used in employee screening.

In contemporary work environment, there are several hundreds of personality tests. However, all personality tests can be subdivided into two major groups: objective and projective. Objective tests are normally administered on a group basis and are generally referred to as self-reporting inventories with true or false type of questions. Interest inventories are a common type of objective tests that measures individual’s interest and attitudes towards a certain type of activities.

Objective tests can further be subdivided into two broad subcategories: normative and ipsative. Normative questions correspond to specific qualities or scales being measured and, consequently, each question is scored for a specific scale. Ipsative tests, on the other hand, require examinee to choose between two responses that measure for different qualities or scales. As such, choosing between either one or the other option indicates examinee’s preferences, attitudes, and abilities in either one quality or the other.

Pre-employment screening has come under a lot of criticism for invading individual privacy, inability to consider multiple situational factors that influence human behaviour, overlooking personal motivation, which is a rather strong stimulus when it comes to employee work performance, overlooking the impact of personality testing on the handicapped, ignoring of stress factor and its’ impact on examinee’s responses. Even though personality testing are not the best predictor of employee work performance, they still are being used more and more widely in employer’s attempt to hire the most productive and reliable employees.

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