Corporate Learning with Jardine Jardine Ong

Welcome everyone to corporate learning excerpts. My name is Jardine.

Todays episode is all about Measuring Accuracy of Psychometric Tests, a topic of Psychometric Profiling Tools.

We will cover briefly the two accuracy factors which are validity and reliability.

So let’s begin.

Psychometric tests are measurement tools, they are used to measure personality traits, cognitive abilities, and behavioral tendencies.

Pretty much they’re being used in the education and work setting to make important decisions regarding career planning, hiring, role fitment and work styles.

So accuracy is key in these assessments. And to make something accurate, you should look into its validity and reliability.

Let’s cover what each means.

When we speak of Validity: it means a test should measure what it is designed to measure. It’s the degree to which a resulting score can be used to figure out the level of the person answering the test.

When we speak of reliability : it means a test should measure whatever it is supposed to, consistently. So it’s the degree to which scores from a particular test are consistent from one time to the next.

Of the two, validity is generally considered the most important for the quality and accuracy of the assessment, because it relates to the actual content of an assessment.

So how do you know if a test is valid?

There are three main types of validity and there needs to be evidence of all of these before a test can be accepted as valid.

To establish whether a test is valid, ask yourself the following questions:

First question. What do you want to measure and does the assessment cover this? This is known as content validity.

Second. How well is the assessment measuring the content? This is known as criterion validity.

Third, is it actually measuring the content (or something else)? This is known as construct validity.

If you can find evidence for all of these validity measures, you can conclude the assessment is valid to whatever it is you want to measure.

Now let’s come to reliability. How do you know if a test is reliable?

Once you’ve figured that your assessment is valid, the next thing to look into is whether it’s found to be doing its job when used in different scenarios, for example with different groups, or over different points in time. This is the main point of reliability.

Now there are three ways a test can be examined for its reliability, and these can be addressed by posing the following questions:

First question. Are the results of your test replicable? In other words, are similar results achieved if a group of people take the test twice? This is known as test-retest reliability.

Second. Are similar results achieved if similar assessments are taken within a short time? This refers to similarity between scores as well as positions, and is known as alternate form reliability.

And third. Is the test internally consistent? This measures how the content of an assessment works together to evaluate understanding of a concept, and is known as internal consistency reliability.

If you can find evidence for all of these reliability measures then the assessment is reliable.

Together, validity and reliability make up the main considerations for judging whether an assessment provides an accurate data. A test is valid if the interpretation of a test-taker’s scores can be directly related to what the test is designed to measure, and it is reliable if this is the case over multiple applications of the test – both for different test-takers as well as for the same test-taker sitting the test at different times.

Welcome everyone to corporate learning excerpts. My name is Jardine. Todays episode is all about the History of Psychometric Tests, a topic of Psychometric Profiling Tools.

We will cover briefly how it all started, key people who contributed to it and concepts that influenced the psychometric models we use now. So let’s begin.


Here are some key points :


//Charles Darwin : our traits could be passed down through family bloodlines which makes our traits different from each other


// Frances Galton : on the differences between human “mental capacity” aka intelligence, measuring human behaviour, and the word “psychometrics” was born


//William James Cattel : mental measurements, like time to name a color, time judgment; judgment of line length; recall of numbers and letters after hearing them


//Charles Spearman : introduced the first measurement of general intelligence to explain performance of any mental task along with a statistical method called Factor Analysis


//Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon : measure intelligence with other things like your attention, judgment, knowledge, and memory, mental levels - if you perform lower than another person your age, you have a lower mental level. If you over perform, then you have a higher mental level


//Lewis Terman : Stanford-Binet Test, used in schools.


//American Psychological Association : SATs


//Single factor theory focusing on general intelligence to multiple factor analysis focusing on associative memory, general reasoning, number ability, perceptual speed, spatial ability, verbal comprehension, and word fluency


//World War I : Tests were developed further as part of the recruitment process to know whether soldiers would develop PTSD


//World War II : Psychometric tests were used to find out which soldiers were eligible for officer ranks


//Galton's Lexical Hypothesis : personality traits can be encoded from language


//Allport and Odbert : took out all personality-related words (18,000 in total!) in attempt to explain human behavior


//Cattel : 12 dimensions of personality to group all 18000 words


//Hans Eysenck : said there were three, and used that in personality tests to recruit soldiers in World War II


//Big Five Model : focus on 5 dimensions to predict work-related outcomes


//Learning from the history : our traits are not fixed; so our personalities can be activated in certain situations and at different times in our lives, this dynamic play between personality affecting work and work affecting personality just shows that work can have a profound impact on our quality of life


//Psychometric tests in organizations : used to understand their teams’ motivations and values and so they can have the team culture best suited for them to drive performance and develop potential

This is Part 1 of your Social Intelligence Workshop.



We will introduce Social Intelligence by first covering these 3 Topics :

1. Social Brain - how humans are wired to connect

2. Social Neuroscience - what happens in our brains when we do connect

3. Social Intelligence - its responsiveness and influence



So let's begin.



Part I.C. Social Intelligence

Responsiveness and Influence of the Social Brain



Our brains interlock, therefore spreading our emotions like virus.



Our social interactions play a role in reshaping our brain, through neuroplasticity, which means repeated experiences sculpt the shape, the size, the number of neurons and their synaptic connections. By repeatedly driving our brain into a given register, our key relationships can gradually mold certain neural circuitry. In effect, being chronically hurt and angered, or being emotionally nourished, by someone we spend time with daily over the course of the years can refashion our brain. Our relationships have subtle yet powerful lifelong impact on us. How we connect with others has unimagined significance. In view of these insights, it means we need to be intelligent about our social world.



What is Social Intelligence? Simply being manipulative, valuing only what works for you at the expense of the other - should not be seen as socially intelligent. Social Intelligence is being intelligent about our relationships but also in them. To be conscious of what emerges as a person who engages in a relationship, to be able to know what actually transpires as we interact and look beyond our narrow self-interest to the best interest of others too. Social responsiveness of the brain requires that we be wise and realize how not just our own moods but our very biology is being driven and molded by the other people in our lives and in turn, it demands that we take stock of how we affect other people's emotions and biology. We can take the measure of a relationship in terms of a person's impact on us, and ours on them. The biological influence passing from person to person suggests a new dimension of a life well-lived, conducting ourselves in ways that are beneficial even at this subtle level for those with whom we connect.

This is Part 1 of your Social Intelligence Workshop.



We will introduce Social Intelligence by first covering these 3 Topics :

1. Social Brain - how humans are wired to connect

2. Social Neuroscience - what happens in our brains when we do connect

3. Social Intelligence - its responsiveness and influence



So let's begin.



Part I.B. Social Neuroscience

What transpires when we connect



How does the brain drive social behaviour and in turn how does our social world influence our brain and biology? Between psychologists and neuroscientists, through the MRI, they found out which parts of the brain light up during a human moment like hearing the voice of an old friend, or what happens in the brain of a person gazing at someone they like, or of someone they dislike.



Let's talk about our Biology. We have T-cells, in the human brain, that affect the immune system's foot soldiers to help us fight bacteria and viruses. We also have the Spindle Cells the human brain that act the most rapidly, guiding us to make snap social decisions. And we have the Mirror Neurons that sense both the move another person is about to make and their feelings to prepare us to imitate the movement and feel with them. Our brain also secretes pleasure-inducing chemical dopamine when we find things pleasurable. Involvement in a distressing relationship increases stress hormones to levels that damage certain genes that control virus-fighting cells.



That means our relationships mold not just our experience but our biology. Nourishing relationships have a beneficial impact on our health, while toxic ones act like a slow poison in our bodies.



The Social Brain represents the only biological system in our bodies that becomes influenced by the internal state of people we are with. All other biological systems regulate their activity in response to signals from within the body, not outside. Our Social Brain orchestrate our interactions as well as our thoughts and feelings about people and relationships. Whenever we connect with someone face to face, voice to voice, skin to skin, with someone else, our social brains interlock.

This is Part 1 of your Social Intelligence Workshop.



We will introduce Social Intelligence by first covering these 3 Topics : 

1. Social Brain - how humans are wired to connect 

2. Social Neuroscience - what happens in our brains when we do connect 

3. Social Intelligence - its responsiveness and influence 



So let's begin.



Part I.A. Our Brain as a "Social Brain"

Human beings are wired to connect.



Whenever we engage with another person, our brains link up with each other. This neural bridge affects the brain and the body of everyone we interact with, including ourselves.



Our brain design is sociable that has social circuits that navigate us through every human encounter. The more strongly connected we are with someone emotionally, the greater the mutual force. Our most potent exchanges occur with those people we spend the greatest amount of time with and those we care about the most.



Our routine encounters act as regulators in the brain, priming our emotions, some desirable, others not.



When we interact with people, our brains engage with each other. During these neural link ups, our brains engage in a dance of feelings. Our feelings about the interaction, send out hormones that regulate biological systems from our heart to our immune cells.

Welcome everyone to Corporate Learning Excerpts. My name is Jardine.

Today’s topic is Part 4 of Understanding Metaprograms, a topic of Neuro Linguistic Programming, today we will talk about how to transfer your learnings to real life.

First step is to identify the metaprogram you wish to change. Identify when, where and with whom you are using it and why isn't it working out.

Next, select the metaprogram you would prefer. Again, identify when, where and with whom you will be using it and why it could work out.

and then lastly, practice the new metaprogram as regularly as possible and see how it is working out.

And that's it for the application of understanding metaprograms.

Stay tuned for the next topic,
Jardine