Psychometric evaluation test

altin_2

Hi.
Have a job interview yesterday, and a test as well.
Have a question about these tests:
Are you evaluated by how many right questions you do (something like driving theory test)? or the accuracy of the right answers?
e.g. you answer 50 of 50 where 50% are right
or you answer 35 of 50 where 100% are right

Which one is considered as better outcome?
Thanks.

Edinburgh65

Hello.

I think that most employers are probably looking for a happy medium, where someone is quite speedy, but very accurate, although I am pretty sure that they will be far more interested in accuracy than speed. It is better to have an employee who does everything correctly, but does less, than someone who churns out a lot of inaccurate work which needs to be corrected. I have been told on a couple of occasions, that employers don't expect candidates to be able to complete these tests in the alloted time, so it's not a worry if you haven't got enough time to answer everything.

Good luck!

altin_2

Thanks.
That's a kind of relief.
I remember being told that you will not be able to finish all of them in the given time.

Running_On_Empty

If you were told that you would not be able to finish all of the questions in the time given then it's an ability or aptitude test.
Only correct answers count, the percentage correct from the number answered is not taken into consideration.
Your correct number of answers is added together and your score is compared with scores of the 'norm group' for that test.
The score is then expressed as a percentile.
The organisation will have a cut off point below which they will probably not consider anyone.
The speed versus accuracy question is usually covered in the intro to the test 'go as quickly but as accurately you can and if you have time at the end, go back and check your answers'.
Hope this helps.
PS I am a qualified tester in psychometric assessments.

DVardysShadow

altin wrote: »

Hi.
Have a job interview yesterday, and a test as well.
Have a question about these tests:
Are you evaluated by how many right questions you do (something like driving theory test)? or the accuracy of the right answers?
e.g. you answer 50 of 50 where 50% are right
or you answer 35 of 50 where 100% are right

Which one is considered as better outcome?
Thanks.

There is no right answer to this question. It really all depends upon the task set against which the candidate is being assessed. Some tasks require accuracy above speed and you could well pass with 18 right out of 18 answered out of 50 asked and you could fail with 24 right out of 36 answered out of 50 asked. If speed is required, then you could probably swap pass and fail in the above scenarios.

And often the guidance appears to be most unhelpful, because the test is not geared to see whether you can deliver X or Y when asked [eg speed and accuracy], but to see which of X and Y you deliver when you are left to your own devices.

I'm critical of psychometric tests. They ignore the ability of people to learn to do a task and they ignore the potential to refactor the task to make it less susceptible to the preferential behaviour of the individual.