Perfect Personality Profiles (6 page)

All psychometric tests and questionnaires have a number of attributes that make them effective measures of people’s qualities. They are standardized tasks to which people can respond on the basis of their own skills, abilities and characteristics. Each person receives the same questions or tasks and is given exactly the same instructions. All responses are scored in the same way to provide the personality profile or type. This standardization allows us to infer that the differences in the way that different people respond are due to differences between them rather than the task itself or particular circumstances. This is not true of much other information collected during the selection process, when the interviewer might phrase questions differently for different candidates, or the ‘chemistry’ between the interviewer and the interviewee will differ, which can affect the way questions are asked and how the candidate responds.

Questionnaires are developed by experts who understand what it is they are trying to measure and how to measure it. They structure information about personality so that it is easier to understand. Rather than a series of stories or disconnected facts, personality questionnaires provide structured information within a profile that can be meaningfully interpreted.

Questionnaires also provide objective information about the individual. Because their administration and scoring are standardized there is no place for the opinions or biases of any individual to affect the results. While most employers attempt to make their selection processes as objective as possible, the reality is that every assessor or interviewer has their own personal prejudices and preconceived notions about people. They may, consciously or unconsciously, find a particular accent suggestive of competence or incompetence, or they may discount some experiences and overvalue others – for example, they may not realize the experience that can be acquired in helping in the home but overestimate what can be gained from participating in team sports – or they may be more likely to believe someone who is attractive over someone who is plainer in looks. A common finding of people who have unclear speech because of a disability is that other people underestimate their intelligence. This type of subjective attitude can lead to errors in assessing people, but objective questionnaires help to counter this subjectivity.

Research shows that well-developed questionnaires can be effective tools in selecting people for jobs. The use of questionnaires can help in the appointment of people who are likely to be more successful in jobs, who fit in better to organizations, who are less likely to fail in the job, who are easier to train and who are less likely to leave after only a short period of service. This makes them very useful for employers. It is also in candidates’ interests to be selected for a job in which they are likely to succeed. Candidates are likely to be happier and more satisfied in their roles, and being successful in a role is, in itself, a benefit. We would all rather succeed than fail.

Questionnaires are developed to provide a high degree of consistency – that is, if you take a questionnaire twice, your results should be very similar. If two people who are similar in personality both complete a questionnaire they should each receive similar results. Typically, questionnaires are more consistent or reliable than other types of assessment. Different interviewers can come to different opinions about the same candidate, and candidates may perform better in one interview than in another. This can be because they get on better with one interviewer than another or because their ideas flowed better on one occasion than another. The standardization of questionnaires is helpful in maintaining a high level of consistency, but the detailed development process, during which the degree of reliability is carefully measured and monitored, ensures that precision of measurement is high.

Because of their standardization and objectivity, questionnaires are also likely to be fairer than many other selection processes. Everyone receives the same task in the same way. There are no helpful hints for one candidate that others do not also get. In addition, during the development process a great deal of attention is generally paid to ensuring that the content of a questionnaire is appropriate for all types of respondents. This was not always the case, however, and in the past some questionnaires included material that was inappropriate or unsuitable for certain groups. Questionnaires designed for selecting managers might have assumed, for example, that the candidates would be male, and culture differences between groups were not taken into account. Modern questionnaire developers are much more sophisticated and aware of these issues and will take them into account in developing and researching questionnaires.

Questionnaire designs

The majority of questionnaires used in a work context are based on the individual choosing or responding to statements or words according to how well they describe them. Typically, you will be presented with a series of words or statements and asked to rate or rank them in some way. On the following pages are some examples of the kinds of questions you might be asked in a personality questionnaire. Such questionnaires are measures of ‘typical performance’ – that is, they are trying to assess how a person usually behaves, not the extremes of how they might behave in extraordinary circumstances. Other tests, either psychometric tests of ability, such as numerical and verbal reasoning tests, or school examination, are tests of ‘maximal performance’, which are designed to measure the best a person can possibly do in a field of performance.

Some questionnaires are very short, with only a single page of questions. However, questionnaires are often much longer and may have 200 or more questions. Longer questionnaires tend to provide more accurate and more detailed results, but they take some time to complete – up to an hour is not unusual. There is a trade-off between the length of the questionnaire and the detail of information about personality that can be gathered and the accuracy of measurement. Short questionnaires generally provide less detailed results but are quicker to complete. Some questionnaires look at as few as four or five aspects of personality, whereas others measure 30 or more. Employers will choose the design that best suits their needs, depending on how they want to use the results.

Some questionnaires are designed specifically for use in an employment context. These have questions or other content that are chosen to be relevant to the way people behave at work. Other questionnaires are designed for more general use, not only employment, and they tend to have broader content, which may include references to topics that are not relevant to work – relating to friends and hobbies, for example, not just employment and work contacts. A further group of questionnaires has been designed for clinical use with people who have psychological problems, and these can have very varied content and may sometimes even seem bizarre. They are not appropriate for use in a mainstream occupational context, and you should not be presented with them during a selection process. Only on rare occasions, such as when an employer refers an employee to a psychologist with some emotional problems, might such a questionnaire be used within employment.

Questionnaires can sometimes feel quite repetitive when you complete them. Some themes seem to be repeated throughout the questionnaire, and you may feel that you have already answered some of the questions. This is, in fact, unlikely, because questionnaires rarely repeat questions exactly. However, they frequently use a few quite similar questions to enhance the accuracy of measurement and the ability to differentiate between people. Repetition can also check the consistency of responses.

Because questionnaires are standardized instruments not all parts of every questionnaire will be relevant to every job. You may become aware of this when you are answering a questionnaire and some of the questions do not seem important for the sort of job you are applying for. Typically, an employer will look only at the relevant parts of the questionnaire in deciding on someone’s suitability for the job.

There are several styles of content in questionnaires. Some ask you to rate or otherwise respond to single words – ‘friendly’ or ‘focused’ – and others use simple phrases and statements, such as ‘Honesty is the best policy’, ‘I will say what I mean’. Some questionnaires use quite long and specific statements, such as ‘When working on a project I need to understand what the main purpose of the work is to help me focus.’ Much of the content of the type of questionnaire you will meet in an occupational context is quite transparent – that is, it is clear what is being asked and what its relevance is to work situations.

Some questionnaire developers feel that this approach encourages people to try to distort their answers. They prefer to use a more opaque style of question, which is difficult to relate directly to performance at work or common personality traits but which has been shown through research to relate to them. For instance, if it were known that introverts had a slight preference to write with a pencil whereas extroverts were more likely to prefer writing with a pen, you might include a question like ‘Do you prefer to write with a pencil or a pen?’ These relationships are usually quite weak, and many questions of this type are required to be sure of a person’s personality. However, because this type of question can appear to be unrelated to any job or employment context, it is not possible to guess what they are measuring or what would be the desirable response. You will see that some of these more opaque questions are included in the examples below.

Some questionnaires ask you to rate statements in different ways. This may be just agree or disagree, true or false, or it may be according to different types of rating scales. Below are some examples of rating question types.

1. Say whether you agree or disagree with the following statements.

2. Use the rating scale below to show how accurately each statement describes you.

3. Rate the extent to which you agree or disagree with each of the following statements using the following scale.

4. Ask yourself, how frequently do I engage in the behaviour described? The rating scale runs from one to eight; choose the number that best applies to each statement.

Some questionnaires ask you to choose between different options. Sometimes the choices are two opposites – being alone, being with people, for instance – but sometimes the options are a selection of different things – being with people, doing something creative. Here you are being asked what your preference is. For some sets of options the choice may be quite clear for you. At other times you may find that you quite like all the options and sometimes you may not really agree with any of them. Even if you have only a minor preference for one thing over another, choose that. Across all the choices in the questionnaire your real personality should come through. Here are some examples for you to try.