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Best practice in psychometrics

Articles on assessment science, fair selection and what's changing in the industry — written by our business psychologists.

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Featured AI & assessment · 3 min read

Can candidates cheat psychometric tests with AI — and what should employers do about it?

Generative AI has changed unproctored online testing. We look at what the evidence says about AI-assisted responding, which test types are most exposed, and the detection and design measures that keep results valid.

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Assessment science 5 min read

Personality type or personality traits? What the evidence says about the two approaches

Personality type and personality traits are two different ways of describing the same people. Type-based questionnaires sort people into categories; trait measures place them along continuous scales. The evidence suggests each has a natural home, and the choice matters most when a decision about someone's job depends on it.

Assessment science 5 min read

Speed or power? What time limits on psychometric tests really measure

Almost every online ability test has a time limit, but the limit does very different jobs depending on how the test is designed. Understanding the difference between speed and power tests helps employers choose the right test, read the results correctly and handle requests for extra time fairly.

Assessment science 5 min read

Why a test score is a range: the standard error of measurement explained

Every psychometric score carries some measurement error, and the standard error of measurement tells you how much. Understanding it changes how you read a score: not as a single exact point, but as a range within which the candidate's true level most probably lies.

Assessment science 5 min read

Parallel forms and item banks: why a good online test has many versions

If every candidate who takes an online test sees the same questions, those questions will not stay secret for long. Parallel forms and item banks are how test developers keep unsupervised online testing secure without making it unfair, and the evidence behind them is worth understanding before you choose a test.

Assessment science 5 min read

Item response theory explained: what it means for employers who use tests

Item response theory sits behind many modern online tests, including adaptive tests that give each candidate a different set of questions. You do not need the mathematics to use it well, but knowing what item response theory does, and what it cannot do, helps you ask suppliers the right questions.

Assessment science 5 min read

Item analysis: how test developers decide which questions make the cut

Most questions written for a new psychometric test never reach a candidate. Item analysis is the set of statistical checks that decides which ones survive, and understanding it explains a great deal about why a well-built test behaves the way it does.

Assessment science 5 min read

How a psychometric test is built: from job analysis to published test

A psychometric test that takes candidates twenty minutes can take a developer a year or more to build. Knowing how a psychometric test is built, and what evidence each stage should leave behind, is the quickest way for an employer to tell a well-founded instrument from a set of questions with a logo on top.

Assessment science 3 min read

Game-based assessments in recruitment: what the research shows

Game-based assessments measure candidates through play — short interactive tasks that record not just answers but behaviour. The marketing claims run ahead of the science, but the science is now substantial enough to say what these tools genuinely add to a selection process, and where the cautions lie.

Assessment science 4 min read

Assessing for potential: building a picture no single test can give you

Hiring for potential means predicting what someone will become, not auditing what they already are. No single instrument does that. The research case is for a battery — ability, personality, judgement, skills and game-based measures — each answering a question the others cannot.

Assessment science 5 min read

Situational judgement tests in recruitment: what the research shows

Situational judgement tests present candidates with realistic work dilemmas and ask them to judge the possible responses. They sit between the abstraction of an ability test and the expense of an assessment centre — and the research explains why they have become a fixture of high-volume and high-stakes selection alike.

Assessment science 4 min read

Ability tests in recruitment: what the research shows

For decades, cognitive ability tests were held up as the single best predictor of job performance. Recent research has revised that claim in important ways — without dislodging ability testing from the core of a well-designed selection process. Here is where the evidence now stands.

Assessment science 4 min read

Personality questionnaires in recruitment: what the research shows

Personality questionnaires divide opinion like no other selection tool: dismissed as horoscopes by some, treated as X-rays by others. The research supports neither view. Used well, they add real predictive value; used badly, they measure little more than a candidate's theory of what the employer wants to hear.

Assessment science 3 min read

Norm groups: why the comparison group matters as much as the score

A percentile is not a property of a person. It is a statement about a comparison — and the comparison group is doing more of the work than most report readers realise.

Assessment science 3 min read

What makes a psychometric test valid? Reliability, validity and fairness explained

Three words get used interchangeably in assessment marketing and mean quite different things. Understanding the difference is the difference between buying a test and buying a claim.

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