The fundamental characteristics of psychological testing give an overview of the psychological tests as the devices of measuring various behavioural characteristics. Psychological testing is in itself a full-fledged branch of psychology, and it would be impossible to introduce many of its complicated concepts like reliability, norms, standardization, validity etc. in any greater detail. In many cases, it may so happen that a test may undergo revision, modification of various degrees, in the light of actual data collected by administering the test. Such changes in the test are obviously made with the specific objective of refining the test.
Tests for Career Selection
- Tests of Achievement: Tests of achievement are designed for measuring knowledge, understanding, or skills in specific subjects; the test may be restricted to a single subject or skill such as arithmetic, yielding one single score or it may cover several subjects or skills and it may yield an overall score. The principal examples of achievement tests are to be found in educational testing of extremely wide variety and levels ranging from pre-primary to graduate unprofessional school. Trade test, also known as proficiency tests are another variety of achievement tests which are very commonly used in selecting industrial, business and military employees. Trade tests are based on the assumption that the individuals taking the tests have already undergone some training and acquired experience related to some specific subject or skills.
- Personality Tests: The term personality test is used to denote usually those tests which are meant for assessing the characteristics of personality which are not intellectual in their nature.Such tests usually measure behavioural characteristics like emotional adjustment, emotional instability, neuroticism and various other traits of human personality such as honesty, perseverance, cooperativeness, aggressiveness etc. Similarly, they also measure motivation, interests, attitudes of individual etc. There are a wide variety of personality tests, but broadly they fall into four categories: rating scales, personality questionnaire on inventories, situational tests and projective tests. Personality tests serve an important function in choosing the right candidate or finding the candidates an appropriate career, based on their personalities. Online aptitude test for career selection is one such associated measure.
- Speed vs. Power Tests: Often tests are classified into speed tests and power tests. A pure speed test is usually composed of items of almost equal difficulty, thus, the score obtained is entirely dependent upon how fast the subject completes a given number of items in a given amount of time. Usually, the time limit is so short that no one is able to achieve a perfect score. In pure power tests, on the other hand, the test items are arranged in increasing difficulty, some items are too difficult for anyone to solve, so that, the test score depends upon how many items the subject solves in a given amount of time. The time limit is however so determined that it is long enough to permit one to solve all the items.
The advances in the knowledge of human behavior may render some tests obsolete, but the general logic by which a new or an old test will be developed remains more or less the same.
