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Psychometric Tests For Education, Careers, And Fun |
By:
Dale Viviano |
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Do you remember those tests that they gave you in high school or middle school that were supposed to tell you what you would be good at? You probably thought they were pretty stupid, didn't you? Few kids take them seriously, but they are actually pretty good at predicting future results. They are what is known as psychometric tests. If you aren't familiar with psychometric testing. It basically is one of the most broad and interesting fields in psychology today. It covers any test meant to determine aptitude, ideal placement in the job market, or even personality types. Basically, anything about you and how you relate to other people or the career world at large can be measured by a psychometric test.
Even the scholastic aptitude test, or SAT as it is most commonly known, is composed of psychometric tests. The interesting thing about the SAT, the ACT, and other scholastic psychometric tests is that they do not measure intelligence, but they do measure something important: they are great predictors of how well you will do in the next phase of your education. Aptitude tests aren't just used in college admissions either. Nowadays, there are tests psychometric designed for almost every profession, although not all of them use them. There are psychometric tests to see how well you would do as a pilot, as a salesman, as an engineer – you get the idea.
As the career field becomes more and more dominated by the psychometric test, however, there is increasingly a backlash. Many people think that figures like standardized testing and grades are not the predictors of success that we once thought they were. More and more nowadays, there are professionals who prefer the old-fashioned methods of interviews and checking resources to psychometric tests. It may seem quaint and inefficient, but it has worked for generations and it will work for generations more. Testing, after all, can't beat judging someone by the strength of their handshake and the demeanor of their presentation.
The most popular psychometric tests aren't used for careers at all. You may not know it, but those little tests that tell you what character from a popular TV show you most resemble are derived from psychometric tests. They are basically a form of personality tests, except that they are used for humor rather than for real personality testing. Nevertheless, they do show how deeply psychometric tests have become a part of our culture. It is fascinating to think about.
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Article Source: http://www.statssheet.com/articles/article50972.html |
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