Is a psychometric assessment really reliable and valid?
At Urban Psychometrics, we have used psychometric assessments in Australia for many years and we are convinced that they are both valid and reliable.
Some people however, are skeptical that these psychometric assessments can quantify human behaviour and even predict how individuals will behave in various situations. If you are unsure whether these assessments can be of use during your recruitment process, there is actually quite a lot of research that clearly demonstrates their validity and reliability.
Over the past 50 years of research, studies have repeatedly demonstrated that a psychometric assessment can consistently predict future job performance and how an individual will fit within your organisation. They can also predict an individual’s propensity for risk aversion and for taking responsibility for the health and safety of others in the workplace.
An individual’s emotional intelligence and their behaviour under stress or under changing conditions in the workplace can all be predicted using a psychometric assessment. In Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, we have found great success with the outcomes of these assessments for our clients and they have shown to be both reliable and valid.
What do you need to know about psychometric assessments?
These assessments have been shown to be internally consistent, which means that if we ask the same question in different ways, an individual will give consistent answers. They also demonstrate what we call ‘test-retest’ reliability, which means that if we give the same test to a group of candidates multiple times, they will produce the same results each time the test is taken.
The psychometric assessments we use in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane are valid because they have been shown to measure what they are designed to measure. So if a particular assessment is meant to measure their intelligence, memory or job performance – that is exactly what it measures.
One of the arguments that have been raised against these assessments is that candidates can ‘fudge’ the results, giving recruiters the information they think will make them a good candidate for the job. Unfortunately for the candidates, psychologists are aware of this problem and have a number of proven strategies to catch anyone who attempts to fake their results.
For more information on psychometric assessments in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, call us on 07 3535 1220 or send us an email.
