Personality testing began in the 19th century and was accelerated during World War I to measure military personnel behavior. In the 1920’s, procedure-projective testing was introduced whereby subjects projected his or her emotional associations onto some kind of stimulus; the most well known of these tests being the Rorschach Inkblot test. During the 1930’s and 1940’s, situational testing was developed in which a subject was placed in a simulated, lifelike situation to collect information about how the person behaved.
Today, organizations are using personality testing in their recruitment and selection process. There are two types of testing; Objective and Projective. Objective-Normative testing measures specific qualities or scales and Objective-Ipsative requires the subject to choose between two responses that measure for different qualities or scales.
Examples of Normative testing include Cattell's 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Objective-Normative testing has been criticized because potential employees may provide answers they deem to be more socially acceptable. Nomative-Ipsative tests address this problem by providing two answers that have equal social appeal but that score on different scales. Examples include Gordon Personal Profile and Gordon Personal Inventory and Edwards Personal Preference Schedule.
Overall, psychological testing is criticized for a number of reasons including the potential for invasion of privacy, the inability to measure how situational factors can influence how a subject would perform in a test setting versus actual job setting, the tendency for stress to affect scores, the tendency to overlook or fail to measure an individual's motivation, and the impact of testing on handicapped employees. One way to mitigate
some of these issues is to combine testing with other screening techniques.
My company has begun having several of our jobs profiled so we can begin using assessments in the Work Keys system. One area we are interested in are the soft skills tests for areas such as personality and safety. Since we are in heavy industry, it is important to know how a job candidate will react in certain situations in regards to safety, as you mention in your writing. I think situational assessments are vital because they test the factors you actually come in contact with on the job, not just basic math and reading. Your insight was great, thanks!
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