Psychometrics is a field of study concerned with the idea and technique of psychological measurement. Generally, it refers to the sector in psychology and education that’s dedicated to testing, measurement, assessment, and related activities. Practitioners are described as psychometricians. Psychometricians usually possess a particular qualification, and most are psychologists with advanced graduate training. Read further to know more about Psychometric tests.
What are Psychometric tests?
A Psychometric test is a mental measurement. It is an activity or assessment that’s conducted to test a candidate’s performance, skills, knowledge, abilities, personality traits, attitudes, job, and academic potential. There are many mental measurement styles and formats which are also taken into consideration, they’re aptitude tests, personality tests, and assessment centres.
3 Main Psychometric testing ares
Beyond the challenge of correctly understanding and answering another challenge is to cope with time constraints. Preparing beforehand not only helps in answering the question but also helps to overcome the time pressure.
Aptitude test
These tests have the goal of assessing various core skills like numeracy, reading, learning, ability to plan/solve problems/think abstractly, and more. It is a process of testing a candidate’s abilities to perform specific tasks of the job and assessing the reaction to a range of different situations.
Here’s a video on Importance of Aptitude Testing-
Personality test
These tests mainly focus on behavioral traits of the candidate that indicate suitability for specific roles. These include leadership tests, motivation tests, and situational judgment tests.
Assessment centers
These tests are based on human interaction assessment. It is basically conducted within groups of candidates to check individual skills.
What is the need of conducting Psychometric test?
Psychometric tests are psychological tools used to determine the suitability of the candidate for a job. There are two reasons for companies to use psychometric testing. The primary one is to boost and reduce HR and recruitment costs and the second, is to confirm that only the quality candidates are on board. The supreme goal of a psychometric test is to make sure that a candidate possesses the number of skills and cognitive ability to perform the duties of a job/role. the foremost common skill sets being measured by these tests include numerical, verbal, and non-verbal reasoning skills.
Here’s a video on how to take Psychometric Test-
Types of Psychometric tests
A psychometric test is used to determine the suitability of the candidate for the applied job. Below discussed are the types of psychometric tests.
Numerical test
It is used to identify how the candidate interprets data often via written and statistical data present in the graph, reports, or charts and helps assess mathematical abilities too. The numerical test helps the employers to know about various abilities of the candidate like Critical Thinking, Quick Analysation and Evaluation, Problem Identification, Designing, and Implementing Alternative Solutions. The test may involve basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, ratios, fraction, percentage, etc.
Logical test
It aims to evaluate the skills required in Nominalization. With the given information the candidate is asked to make a suitable decision. It is designed to assess a candidate’s ability as to how he interprets data and how relevant are his/her decisions.
Verbal test
It is used as the simplest way to see the ability to judge detailed written information and make suitable decisions. They are widely used in the recruitment process since most of the jobs require the candidate to understand and make decisions based on verbal or written information. This assesses the ability of the candidate as to how he spells words, uses accurate grammar, understand word analogies, frame out the correct meaning of idioms, etc.
Inductive test
Inductive reasoning tests are designed to examine a candidate’s abstract reasoning ability. It helps identify how well a candidate can see the underlying logic in patterns. One of the main benefits is that it is not dependent upon language, which makes it a good tool for assessing candidates for whom English is not their comfort language. Moreover, they are usually very good for predicting problem-solving ability which is necessary for many jobs/roles.
Mechanical reasoning test
Mechanical reasoning tests measure your knowledge of mechanical and physical concepts. Questions related to levers, gears, pulley, electrical circuits, springs, magnetism are usually asked.
Error checking test
An error checking test is a sort of aptitude test that assesses the candidate’s ability to quickly identify any errors in complex data sets like codes, or combinations of alphanumeric characters. These data sets are often brought up as ‘strings’.
Watson glaser test
The Watson Glaser critical thinking test is meant to assess an individual’s ability to understand situations and data. It is often used by organizations where arguments or propositions consideration is especially important, like law firms. Watson Glaser critical thinking test is based on RED model of critical thinking i.e. Recognize assumption, Evaluate arguments, and Draw conclusions.
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