Career Assessment

Career assessments are tools that are designed to help individuals understand how a variety of
personal attributes (i.e., interests, work values ability and skills), impact their potential success and
satisfaction with different career options. Career assessments have played a critical role in career
development and the economy in the last century (Whiston and Rahardja, 2005). Assessments of
some or all of these attributes are often used by career development professionals (education
advisors and career counsellors) to help individuals make more informed career decisions.

These assessments may be conducted separately or together for career management, and they
provide three important pieces of information:

 Aptitude Assessment - what the user likes to do, and

 Attitude Assessment - what is important to the user.

 Ability Assessment - what the user can do well,

Ability Assessment

Ability Assessment results provide useful information that individuals can use to identify their
strengths. They can use results to identify training needs and occupations that they may wish to
explore further. Individuals are strongly encouraged to use additional information about them when
making career decisions.

The results of the Career Assessment are authorised for career exploration, career planning, and
career guidance purposes only. No other use of this tool or any part of this tool is valid or
authorised.

This unit is intended for Career Development Professionals (Education Officers/Advisors) who
administers the Career Assessment tools. It presents the basic rules and procedures for
administering the Ability Assessment. It includes checklists, guidelines, and other information
designed to make your job easier.

Throughout this training unit you will notice an emphasis on standardised administration of the
Career Assessment. Understanding the importance of this emphasis has several benefits. Following
the recommended procedures will ensure that clients receive valid scores that are representative of
their abilities and skills. Valid scores provide both the clients and Advisors who work with them (or
anyone else) with meaningful information to use in career exploration.

Standardised administration is required to ensure the valid results that are needed to give the clients
and Advisors meaningful information to use in their career exploration efforts. Standardised
administration involves making each administration of the Ability Assessment as identical to the
conditions under which it was developed as possible. To help you achieve this goal, a script is
provided for you to read as you introduce and give directions for each part. This is why you are
instructed to read the directions “verbatim.” There are guidelines that show how you can respond to
certain situations that may arise and to questions from clients.

So, while the Career Assessment is intended as an assessment tool to help individuals explore
careers, it is important to do your part as an Advisor to make sure the clients take the Career
Assessment under conditions that produce valid results. It is also important to stress to the clients
that to get useful results, they must do their best when taking the Career Assessment. Working with
you, your clients can get the greatest benefit from the Career Assessment.

Career Assessment Fairness

Test fairness can be defined as an assessment being equally valid for all segments of the population
on those factors it is intended to measure. When developing test items or questions, it is crucial to
examine item fairness to ensure that the item does not:

 measure knowledge or experiences that are not accessible to all groups and are not relevant
to the factor being measured;

 interfere with a specific group of clients’ ability to respond to the item because its contents
are distracting or are irrelevant to the factor being measured;

 contain clues or information that would improve the performance of a specific group of test
takers; and

 contain information that could be offensive to any group of clients.

Two procedures were used to ensure fairness of the items in the Career Assessment.

 First, a sensitivity review was conducted to ensure that items reflected the multicultural
nature of Indian society and that items did not contain language that perpetuated
stereotypes, offended members of a particular group, or might otherwise distract clients
from the task at hand. Through the sensitivity review, any potential material that might
offend people on the basis of age, sex, disability, ethnic group, or religion was eliminated.

 The second procedure consisted of extensive statistical analyses that identified those
assessment questions on which one group of clients outperforms other groups in spite of
similar levels of ability. Questions that demonstrated different difficulty levels across groups
(e.g., women, men) were scrutinised for the existence of possible bias to determine whether
they should be eliminated from the Career Assessment.

Ability Assessment

The Ability Assessment is composed of 6 separately timed sections (referred to as parts or exercises).
The parts are combined to measure basic abilities related to the world of work. Administer the
𝟏
paper-and-pencil exercises (approximately 1𝟐 hours - 2 hours). The table describes the 6 parts, the
abilities measured, and the actual time required for each exercise.
Exercise Descriptions

Order Exercise Description Abilities Number Actual

Measured of Items Test
Time*
1 Arithmetic Consists of mathematical word Arithmetic 18 20
Reasoning problems requiring addition, Reasoning minutes
subtraction, multiplication, or
division of whole numbers, fractions,
and percentages.
2 Vocabulary Consists of indicating which two Verbal 19 8
words out of four have either the minutes
same or opposite meanings.
3 Three- Consists of determining which one of Spatial 20 8
Dimensional four three- dimensional figures can minutes
Space be made by bending and/ or rolling a
flat, two-dimensional form.
4 Computation Consists of mathematical exercises Computation 40 6
requiring addition, subtraction, minutes
multiplication, or division of whole
numbers.
5 Name Consists of determining whether two Clerical 90 6
Comparison names are the same or different. Perception minutes
6 Object Consists of identifying the one Form 42 5
Matching drawing out of four that is the exact Perception minutes
duplicate of the figure presented in
the question stem.
* Administration time requires approximately 5-10 minutes per exercise.

Abilities Measured

The Ability Assessment measures the following abilities:

VA - Verbal Ability: The ability to understand the meaning of words and use them effectively in good
communication when you listen, speak, or write. This ability is important in such fields as
communications, education, law, literary arts, and sales. Measured by the Vocabulary exercise.

AR - Arithmetic Reasoning: The ability to use several math skills and logical thinking to solve
problems in everyday situations. It involves gathering and sorting through all information related to
a problem, making educated guesses about how best to solve the problem, picking a likely way to
solve it, and then explaining your decisions. This ability is important in such fields as engineering,
finance, mathematics, science, and technology. Measured by the Arithmetic Reasoning exercise.

CM – Computation: The ability to use arithmetic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication,

and division to solve everyday problems involving numbers. This ability is important in such fields as
engineering, finance, bookkeeping, construction, mathematics, science, and technology. Measured
by the Computation exercise.

SA - Spatial Ability: The ability to form pictures of objects in your mind. It involves easily
understanding how drawings represent real objects and correctly imagining how parts fit together.
This ability is important in such fields as architecture, carpentry, engineering technology, the visual
arts, interior design, and clothing design. Measured by the Three-Dimensional Space exercise.

FP - Form Perception: The ability to quickly and accurately see details in objects, pictures, or
drawings. It involves noticing little differences in shapes of figures, shading, and lengths and widths
of lines. This ability is important in such fields as craft arts, craft technology, jewellery making,
production technology, production work, and quality control. Measured by the Object Matching
exercise.

CP - Clerical Perception: The ability to quickly and accurately see differences in detail in printed
material. The material may be text or numbers on a page, in lists, or in tables. It involves noticing if
there are mistakes in the text and numbers, or if there are careless errors in working math problems.
This ability measures “speed of perception,” which is required in many industrial jobs, even when
these jobs do not have verbal or numerical content. This ability is important in such fields as
administration, claims processing, library services, office machine operation, packaging, and word
processing. Measured by the Name Comparison exercise.

Standardised Administration Conditions: An Overview

The Ability Assessment must be administered under standardized conditions. You will need to
prepare in advance for this administration by making sure you have the necessary materials and
facilities to conduct a standardized administration session. The benefit of taking this assessment
under standard conditions is confidence that your client’s results are truly representative of his or
her potential, knowledge, skills, and abilities. If you have any indication from your client or from
information on the score report that there were poor assessment conditions, you should exercise
caution in using the results. You also may want to encourage the client to retake the Ability
Assessment.

The value, accuracy, and acceptance of assessment scores are affected by the procedures and
conditions under which an assessment is administered. Poor assessment conditions may adversely
affect individuals’ assessment scores, preventing them from demonstrating their true potential,
knowledge, skills, and abilities. The procedures for administering assessments must elicit the clients’
best performance. In particular, attention should be given to the physical setting and psychological
aspects of administration to ensure that clients:

 are free from distracting influences in the surrounding environment (e.g., noise, poor
lighting, extreme temperature);

 are not distressed by physical discomfort (including fatigue);

 consider the assessment worthwhile; and

 are willing and able to perform to the best of their abilities.

The administration procedures described below are to be followed when preparing the assessment
facilities, giving instructions, and distributing and collecting materials (such as the booklets, answer
sheets, and scoring pencils). Assessment facilities will vary from one location to another, and ideal
assessment conditions cannot always be achieved. However, sound judgment must be exercised
throughout the assessment process to ensure that proper administration and assessment control
practices are followed and that all clients have the same opportunity to do their best.

Close attention to the procedures described on the following pages will result in properly
standardized administration conditions.

Order of Administration

The standard order of administration is the same as the order in which instructions are presented in
this unit. If you are administering the 6 paper-and-pencil exercises, they should be given in order.
Directions for scoring these exercises are incorporated within the directions for administration
appearing in this lesson. The exercises in the Ability Assessment are administered from standardized
scripts. These scripts provide for consistency across different advisors.

Reassessment

If your client needs to schedule a retest of the Ability Assessment, consider how long it has been
since the previous assessment. A six-month wait before administering the assessment again is
advisable. This period of time lessens any possible practice effect and helps your client obtain the
most useful and valid results.

Client Requirements

Each client:

 must be at least 12 years old;

 must be proficient in reading English; and
 should not have taken any form of the Ability Assessment within 6 months.

Reasonable Accommodations

Reasonable accommodations can be made for clients with special needs to enable them to take the
Ability Assessment. Interpretive materials developed for the instrument, however, were developed
with a set of standardised materials following standardised procedures. Validity evidence associated
with the assessment tool is based on these materials and procedures. Thus, modifications to
materials or procedures can affect the accuracy and relevance of information provided to individuals
who take the Ability Assessment.

Examples of accommodations to the Ability Assessment are presented below. These examples are
not meant to be exhaustive and are provided to give examples of the reasoning that goes into
determining whether accommodations are reasonable.

Time Limits: Reasonable accommodations to the Ability Assessment may include increasing time
limits for Parts 1, 2, and 3, since these are considered power tests, and time limits were developed
so clients would have ample time to complete all questions. Thus, you may consider increasing time
limits for these parts if the client has a learning disability such as dyslexia. It would not be
appropriate to increase time limits for Parts 4, 5, or 6 because these are speeded tests, where a
person’s ability to work quickly contributes significantly to his or her results.

Print Size: Another reasonable accommodation may be to increase the print size of the Ability
Assessment questions in Parts 1, 2, 3, and 5 for a client with visual impairments. However, it would
not be reasonable to increase the print size for Parts 4 and 6, since a person’s ability to detect
differences in shapes and shading may be affected by their vision.

Directions: The Ability Assessment is not intended to measure a client’s ability to understand
directions and follow instructions. Thus, your client is provided with practice exercises as part of the
assessment. A reasonable accommodation would be to encourage clients who may have difficulty
understanding directions to ask questions or ask for further explanation.

National Institute for Career Education may be able to provide assistance in determining whether or
not the Ability Assessment is appropriate for your clients, what reasonable accommodations you can
make to the instrument, and/or what are some alternative assessments that may be more
appropriate to your clients’ particular needs.

Reasonable accommodations can appear in many different forms. For example, reasonable physical
accommodations that would allow a wheelchair user to reach and move the pegs comfortably
include:

 pillows to prop the client up in a steady position;

 blocking or locking the wheels to steady the wheelchair;

 moving the pegboard beyond the table edge for clients who cannot reach the top rows due
to small stature, unsteady posture, immovable wheelchair arms, and other physical
problems. However, the board must not be moved so far forward that it becomes unstable;

 moving furniture to allow the client to manoeuvre between the rows of chairs and tables in
the room; and

 providing extra pieces to the client so that he or she will not have to move the wheelchair to
retrieve dropped pieces.

The primary factor in determining an alternative assessment or the specific type of reasonable
accommodation is the requirement to measure the client’s job-related skills and abilities, not the
disabilities or impairments. In addition, when guiding individuals with disabilities, the best practice is
to use Ability Assessment scores in combination with other job-related information. This practice
should also be used for guiding individuals without disabilities.

Assessment Teams

The actual composition and size of an Ability Assessment team will depend on the size of the group
of individuals taking the assessment. The number of Career Advisors depends on the number of
clients taking the assessment. See the following section entitled “Advisor-Client Ratio” for details.
The Education Advisor has the following responsibilities:

 monitoring assessment materials received, used, and returned;

 controlling the assessment session;
 giving introductions, orientations, and instructions;
 administering the assessment; and
 directing the work of other Advisors.

The Education Officer is primarily responsible for helping the Education Advisor in the actual
administration process. The Advisor may be responsible for processing the clients; this includes
signing them in and out of the administration session, ensuring that they have not previously taken
any forms of the Ability Assessment during the previous six months, ensuring that all assessment
materials have been returned, and answering non-assessment-related questions (e.g., locations of
restrooms, water dispenser, etc.)

Advisor-Client Ratio

The Ability Assessment should be administered to groups of minimum two or more clients. The
group should never be so large that the assessment Advisor cannot give adequate attention to all
clients.

One Officer + one Advisor can administer the assessment to a maximum of 6 clients (i.e., 1:6
Advisor/client ratio). With larger groups, one Advisor is needed for every 6 additional people. For
example, an Officer and two Advisors are needed for a group of 7 to 12 people, while an Officer and
three Advisors are needed to administer the assessment to a group of 13 to 18 people.

A smaller Officer-Advisor ratio is recommended when administering the Ability Assessment to

individuals requiring additional assistance (e.g., physically disabled, low reading skills, or unfamiliar
with standardised assessment procedures).

Assessment Facilities

The sitting room must be well-lighted, well-ventilated, quiet, and comfortable.

The assessment room and working surfaces should have adequate light for comfortable reading
without eye strain. Deep shadows and strong glare on working surfaces caused by poor arrangement
of light fixtures should be avoided.

All practical steps must be taken to control ventilation, temperature, and humidity. The assessment
should not be conducted when temperature or humidity is extreme or uncomfortable as to interfere
with concentration.

The room must be free from extraneous noise and interruptions. For example, frequent shouting,
bells, auto honking and other such noises outside of the administration room can interfere with a
client’s performance. The assessment must not be administered in a location where ordinary
business is being conducted. The distractions of conversation, machinery, and other noises can
reduce a client’s level of concentration.
The room must be arranged so that the Advisor can be seen by every client. Seats should be a
minimum of two feet apart on each side to prevent clients from interfering with each other or
obtaining information from each other’s answer sheet. There should be enough space between
seats to allow for the Officer and Advisor(s) to move among the clients easily and observe their work
without causing a disturbance.

Each client must have a flat, smooth surface on which to work; it should be large enough that open
booklets, answer sheets, and scratch paper can be used easily without overlapping.

Assessment Materials and Supplies

The Advisor must ensure that adequate supplies of all required materials are available before
conducting a session.

Required materials and supplies are:

 Ability Assessment Administration Manual;

 Ability Assessment Booklets;

 Ability Assessment Answer Sheets;

 two timers (one for backup) or another type of accurate timing device that has both minute
and second set buttons (e.g., digital clock timer. Do not use wristwatches, track, or lap-type
stopwatches.);

 no. 2 pencils with erasers (two per client plus extra supply);

 two pieces of scratch paper;

 blank piece of paper (must be inserted in the answer sheet to prevent pencil marks from
imprinting on the opposite page); and

 “Assessment Session In Progress - Do Not Disturb” signs.

Recommended supplies include:

 writing pens and large felt-tip marker;

 paper clips, rubber bands, and stapler;

 identification/name badges for Education Advisors and Officer(s); and

Before the administration session begins, instrument booklets should be examined for misprints,
pencil marks, missing pages, and other irregularities. If any irregularity exists, the defective
booklet(s) must not be used.
Two No. 2 pencils with erasers should be available for each client. In addition, an extra supply must
be available to immediately replace those that become dull or break during the session. An extra
timer must be available and in use in case one timer fails to function properly. The Officer and at
least one Advisor must use a timer to monitor the timing of each part. Timers must be started
immediately after the Advisor says “Begin.”

Booklet and Answer Sheet Preparation

The Education Advisor has the option of completing sections of the answer sheet for each client
before the session begins. By completing certain sections of the answer sheet in advance, the
Advisor will ensure more accurate information, as well as shorten the time needed by clients to
complete the answer sheet. The clients are instructed to verify the information and make
corrections as needed.

For use in distributing assessment results to clients, it is recommended that the Advisor keep a
session log or roster with the following information: 1. session date, 2. session time, 3. assessment
location, 4. client’s name, and 5. client’s identification number. The log can be created in advance, or
at the beginning of the assessment session.

Ability Assessment Answer Sheet

At the end of the session, the Advisor should check the completed answer sheets to ensure that
each client’s Name and Identification Number is filled in and recorded correctly on the session
roster. If a client did not fill in the Identification Number section, the Advisor will need to fill in a
unique number from the session roster.

A plain piece of 81⁄2" x 11" paper is inserted between the pages of the answer sheet as a guard
against transfer of stray marks from previously marked responses. The answer sheet is placed inside
the front cover of the instrument booklet. Two additional sheets of plain paper must also be inserted
into the booklet to be used as scratch paper for Parts 1 and 4.

Security of the Assessment

 The assessment materials must be treated as sensitive and confidential and must not be
released to unauthorised persons.

 The assessment materials cannot be reviewed by unauthorised persons.

 The assessment materials must not be left unattended before, during, or after the session.

 A count of all assessment materials must be made immediately after the close of the session
to ensure clients’ response sheets remain confidential.

Arrival Time and Preliminary Duties

The Advisor should allow sufficient time to properly prepare the assessment site prior to the
scheduled starting time. The Advisor:
  inspects the room to ensure comfortable and adequate accommodations for the number of
clients scheduled to appear;

 determines where the clients will be seated;

 gives the receptionist (if necessary) any needed admission or informational materials;

 posts directional signs around the examination area; and

 checks the location of restrooms and water dispenser.

Monitoring Assessment Sessions

Successful administration of the Ability Assessment depends largely on the alertness of the Advisor.
After the assessment has started, the Officer and/or Advisor(s) should quietly and unobtrusively
walk around the room to observe the work of each client and ensure that directions are understood
and followed. If a correction is necessary, the client is told the proper procedures by the Advisor
with the least possible interruption.

The Advisor is not permitted to make any comments to the clients about their performance, express
encouragement or discouragement, or urge clients to work harder or faster (unless such statements
are specifically included in the assessment instructions).

The Advisor must ensure that each client turns the page of the assessment booklet when instructed
and continues working without loss of time. If a client stops unusually early in the assessment
process, the Advisor needs to verify that part of the assessment material was not omitted or that the
client did not accidently skip a section or page. Clients who complete all the questions before time is
called are instructed to go back and look over the questions in the section just finished. Clients are
not permitted to turn to another section of the assessment before being instructed to do so.

Client Deportment

Clients must not be left unsupervised at any time. The Advisor should always be alert for signs that a
client is not following instructions (e.g., continuing to work after time has been called, taking
information from another’s answer sheet, using unauthorised testing or assessment aids, or any
other disruptive behaviour). Every effort must be made to discourage these activities. However, if
the abuse continues, the Advisor quickly and quietly asks the client in question to leave the session.
The Advisor must document the dismissal actions for future reference.

Significant Behaviour

While observing an assessment session, the Advisor should make notes regarding any significant
client characteristics and behaviour indicating that the assessment results may not represent
accurate measurements of ability. The following are some examples of situations that would
necessitate special handling:

 A client becomes sick or leaves before completing the instrument booklet.

  A client has reading or language difficulties that were not apparent when the assessment
was scheduled.

 A client finishes a part well ahead of the prescribed time limit.

 A client has difficulty in following oral or written directions.

 A client has difficulty reading the printed material because s/he forgot to bring glasses.

 A client appears to be answering questions randomly or exhibiting other signs that may
indicate that s/he has difficulty reading or lacks motivation.

 A client is caught cheating.

 An unusual interruption or incident occurred (e.g. a chair fell over, a maintenance person
entered the room, and the lights went out).

Disturbances and Distractions

During the actual assessment process, the Advisor takes actions to avoid distractions, disturbances,
and unnecessary interruptions. Some rules to enforce include the following:

 Spectators are not allowed to watch clients taking assessments.

 Clients cannot bring children into the room.

 Foot traffic is not permitted through the assessment room.

 No one is permitted to enter the assessment room to converse with the Advisor (s) or clients
after the assessment has started.

 If there is a telephone in the room, it must be unplugged if arrangements to eliminate all

incoming and outgoing calls have not been made.

 Mobile phones and alarm wristwatches must be turned off during the assessment process.

 Clients are prohibited from eating or drinking in the room.

The Advisor(s) will not engage in behaviour that might distract or irritate the clients. They do not:

o read outside materials (e.g. books, magazines, newspapers) during the assessment session;

o wear noisy jewellery, squeaky shoes, or clothes that rustle;

o eat or drink in the room;

 o display the timers to the clients (Keep the timers out of sight as much as possible); and

o stand immediately behind or next to an client, but instead observe from a distance, moving
quietly around the room.

Closing Procedures

At the close of the assessment session, the Advisor must ensure that all assessment booklets,
answer sheets, scratch paper, and No. 2 pencils are collected before the clients are allowed to leave
the administration area.

No one other than the Advisor and Officer(s) is permitted to handle or inspect any used or unused
assessment materials, completed answer sheets, instrument booklets, or other related materials.
Under no circumstances is any client permitted to make any changes to item responses after the
time allowed for that exercise has elapsed. Properly dispose of all scratch paper and defective
answer sheets.

General Assessment Administration Procedures

Reading Instructions

In any assessment session, only one person, the Education Officer, should read the instructions to
the clients. However, if a different Advisor must direct the group, it is important that the new
Advisor is introduced to the clients by the person who was conducting the session. Explain that the
new Advisor will give the remainder of the instructions and administer the rest of the assessment.

Putting Clients at Ease

All clients deserve reasonable and courteous treatment. Every effort must be made to secure clients’
cooperation and reduce their level of nervousness and tension, so that they will be willing and able
to do their best work.

After the clients have been seated, the Advisor introduces himself or herself and the Advisors briefly
explains the purpose of the assessments and how the clients should do their best.

Orientation and Introduction

The Advisor should give introductory information in a conversational, friendly, and relaxed manner.
When discussing the materials, the Advisor avoids using the word “test” or “exam” and, instead,
refers to “assessment” or “exercises.” The word “test/exam” can cause tension for some clients.

It is important to generate interest by acquainting the clients with the purpose and uses of the
assessment, emphasizing the benefits for the clients.

Giving Instructions

The instructions to be read to clients are indicated by a symbol. The instructions must be read
exactly as written (verbatim). The Advisor should be standing (if physically able) while reading the
instructions to the clients. In addition, the Advisor must be familiar with the procedure for
administering each exercise, as well as the practice items.

Before reading the specific instructions for each part, the Advisor(s) ensure that all clients have
turned to the proper page of the instrument booklet. This is done by glancing quickly at each booklet
after the clients have been instructed to turn to a specific page. If a client has turned to the wrong
page, the Advisor helps him/her locate the correct page. Similarly, it is necessary to ensure that each
client is working on the proper section of the answer sheet. While reading the instructions, the
Advisor(s) do not allow clients to turn pages or begin working on either the practice or timed
questions.

The instructions are never delivered in the Advisor’s own words. Any deviation from the written
directions may change the assessment and invalidate the results. Attempting to memorise the
directions greatly increases the chance of altering the standardised instructions. Instead, the Advisor
must read the instructions verbatim, directly from this Assessment Manual, as the clients read from
the instructions appearing in their booklets. The only point at which the Advisor may explain specific
assessment information in his or her own words is when a client needs help in completing the
practice questions.

The instructions should be delivered in a clear, audible, conversational tone and in a manner that
emphasises all of the important points. Care must be taken to avoid a mechanical delivery. The
Advisor needs to enunciate clearly and speak loudly enough so that all clients can hear the
instructions. Instructions are addressed to those sitting the greatest distance from the Advisor. In
addition, the instructions are read at a speed that allows the clients to follow the Advisor’s voice
and, at the same time, read the printed instructions that appear in their booklets.

Instructions that pertain to practice questions must never be omitted. To avoid giving the impression
that one part or exercise is more important than the others; the Advisor refrains from giving more
detailed instructions for one exercise than for another. When referring to practice questions, the
Advisor pauses long enough to permit the clients to study each item and come up with the solution.
The length of the pause may be ascertained by observing the clients.

Understanding Instructions

The Ability Assessment is not intended to measure a person’s ability to understand and follow
instructions. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that scores reflect each of the abilities that the
exercises were designed to measure and that they are not affected by any lack of comprehension of
the instructions. Practice questions are included to make sure that the instructions are understood.
The Advisor must inspect each client’s practice question responses before proceeding with the timed
questions.

If the completed practice questions indicate that the client had difficulty understanding the
instructions, then the instructions should be repeated. (On an individual basis, the Advisor calls
attention to any errors the client made in answering the practice questions and encourages the
client to rework incorrect questions. The Advisor will not resume the assessment process until all
clients understand the instructions for that particular exercise and answer all questions pertaining to
the instructions.)
Advisors must be extremely careful to administer the Ability Assessment properly and fairly to all
clients. However, if, after a reasonable amount of time explaining directions, some applicants are
still unable to understand the procedure, the Advisor instructs clients to do their best and begins the
assessment. If this occurs, the Advisor documents the situation for future reference.

Practice Questions

Clients should be encouraged to ask for an explanation of any practice question(s) they do not
understand.

When a client makes an error or asks for further explanation of a practice question, the Advisor may
provide a brief explanation. This will usually be sufficient to eliminate any misunderstanding on the
part of the client. In some cases, however, the Advisor may need to demonstrate how the answer
was obtained and show the client why his or her answer is incorrect. The Advisor does not try to
“teach” the client a new skill or concept. For example, it is not appropriate to teach the client how to
multiply numbers.

The Advisor instructs the client to erase any incorrect answers completely before reworking the
question correctly.

To assist the Advisor, examples of the most frequently occurring practice problem errors are
included in this unit.

Answering Client Questions

The Advisor in all statements or answers to questions, must avoid any remark, tone, or mannerism
that might be construed as sarcastic or antagonistic. The Advisor always exhibits tact, courtesy, and
firmness, making it obvious to the clients that they are all being treated equally.

The Advisor does not give any information that aids in solving any actual assessment problem. Also,
the Advisor does not act annoyed or surprised during the assessment session.

Use of Calculators, Computers, or Similar Devices

The use of calculators, computers, mobiles or similar devices by clients is not allowed. Use of these
devices would undermine the standardisation of assessment; such devices were not allowed during
the development of the assessment. The assessment is designed to measure the abilities of clients,
not their skill in using assistive devices.

Administration Checklists

A properly conducted assessment administration session produces valuable results for both the
client and those individuals using the results (e.g., Education Advisors and Career Counsellors). It
gives the client a more positive perspective toward taking a career exploration assessment. In
addition, it gives the client and the assessment user greater confidence in the validity of the
assessment results.

The checklists that follow are designed to help ensure proper administration of the Ability
Assessment and to eliminate confusion, uncertainty, and frustration that may arise during the
administration. The lists also serve as reminders of decisions to be made before, during, and after
assessment sessions.

Before the Assessment Session

1. Understand the nature and purpose of administering the Ability Assessment.

2. Decide on the number of clients to be included in a session:

(a) 1:6 Advisor/client ratio.

(b) Additional Advisors needed when disabled or disadvantaged persons are in a session.

3. Inspect the assessment facilities:

(a) lighting;
(b) ventilation, temperature, and humidity;
(c) noise;
(d) work space (table size, room layout); and seating arrangement.

4. Decide on the exact time of the assessment session:

(a) avoid the day before or after a holiday;

(b) avoid conflicts with the recess of other training groups or meetings; and
(c) ensure ample time.

5. Assemble the required materials and supplies:

(a) Ability Assessment Administration Manual:

(i) one for each Education Officer and
(ii) one for each Advisor.
(b) Ability Assessment booklets (Parts 1 through 6):
(i) one for each Client;
(ii) one for each Advisor; and
(iii) one for each Officer.
(c) Answer sheets (Parts 1 through 6):
(i) one for each Client;
(ii) one for each Advisor; and
(iv) one for each Officer.
(d) No. 2 pencils with erasers:
(i) two for each client.
(e) Stopwatches or other approved timers (do not use wristwatches):
(i) one for each Advisor and
(ii) one for each Officer.
(f) “Assessment Session In Progress - Do Not Disturb” signs
 6. Prepare booklets and answer sheets:
(a) Check the assessment booklets for any misprints, pencil marks, missing pages,
bends/folds, and other irregularities or defects.
(b) Insert a plain sheet of paper inside the answer sheet.
(c) Insert the answer sheet and two (2) sheets of scratch paper inside the front cover of
each assessment booklet before distribution.

7. Study assessment and directions carefully. Become familiar with:

(a) administration directions for each part,
(b) time limits for each part,
(c) scoring directions for each part,
(d) common errors for each part,
(e) method of indicating answers.

8. Decide the order in which the materials and supplies are to be distributed and collected.

Day of the Assessment Session

1. Check all materials to see that you have enough for the assessment session.

2. Put up directional signs and “Assessment Session in Progress - Do Not Disturb” signs.

3. Inspect the room to ensure comfortable and adequate accommodations for the number of
clients scheduled (space, lighting, temperature, ventilation, and condition and arrangement
of tables and chairs).

4. Give receptionist any necessary materials.

5. Check location of restrooms, drinking water dispenser, telephones and the nearest exit in
case of fire or an emergency in order to exit the building quickly.

During the Assessment Session

1. Direct them to sit in designated places.

2. Proceed with the assessment administration:

(a) stand in a central location

(b) speak in a loud, clear voice,
(c) introduce yourself and Advisor(s),
(d) give the introductory script/orientation, and
(e) answer any questions.

3. Distribute materials according to predetermined order.

4. Caution clients not to begin until told to do so.
5. Ensure that all demographic and assessment administration information is marked on the
answer sheet.
 6. Read the instructions exactly as written.
7. Administer practice questions for each part:
(a) review the common error descriptions for the practice questions,
(b) explain to clients their errors, and
(c) wait until all clients have correctly completed the practice questions before beginning
the timed questions.

8. Administer timed questions for each part.

9. Start all stopwatches immediately after saying “Begin.”
10. Move quietly about the room to:
(a) ensure that clients mark their answers in the correct part of the answer sheet,
(b) ensure that clients continue working until they reach the end of a section,
(c) ensure that clients stop at the end of a section,
(d) replace broken electronic scorers/pencils,
(e) encourage clients to keep working until time is called,
(f) ensure that clients are not copying other clients’ answers, and
(g) attend to those clients who finish early.

11. Permit no outside interruptions.

12. Stop at the proper time.

After the Assessment Session

1. Collect the booklet (s), answer sheet(s), protective sheet of paper, scratch paper, and pencils
from each client individually according to predetermined order.

2. Record, for future reference, any problems or deviations in administering the assessment
and any client whose behaviour during the assessment indicated an irregularity that could
invalidate his or her scores.

3. Count the booklets and answer sheets to ensure that all materials have been collected.

4. Arrange for the answer sheets to be scored. This can be done in one of several ways.

(a) You may be able to send the answer sheets to a regional office. This office will score the
results and send the individual Ability Assessment Reports to your office. OR

(b) You can create a client information file by manually entering data from the client answer
sheets into Assessment software to generate the individual reports.

Report for the Ability Assessment

Following completion and scoring of the Ability Assessment clients receive an Assessment Report
that is customized to their results. The score report was designed to be self-interpretable by clients.
However, as always, you may be able to assist your clients in understanding their results and using
them to explore the world of work. The assessment report:
 1. reviews the purpose of the Ability Assessment and the information it provides;
2. explains the percentile scores shown on each client’s ability profile;
3. describes the link between the ability score and Job Zones;
4. suggests ways to explore careers using the information, and
5. presents lists of occupations, by each Job Zone, that fit the client’s profile;
6. advise the client to keep a printed copy of the score report for their future reference.

Encourage clients to look at occupations in their current and future Job Zones and identify ones that
are of particular interest. They can explore these further using Occupations link of the website. Ask
them to think about whether they can picture themselves working in the occupations listed in their
report. They also should look at the occupations on the remaining lists.

Possible Client Challenges

Clients may have trouble understanding the abilities that make up the Ability Assessment.

With the client, look at the descriptions of the six abilities, which are presented on the score report.
Mention the exercise that measured each ability and basic description. For example: “The
Vocabulary exercise you completed measures your Verbal Ability—that’s how well you understand
what words mean and how good you are at using words when you listen, speak, and write.”

Clients may have a difficult time understanding Percentile Scores and the Ability Assessment.

Explain that percentile scores are a good way to compare the client’s abilities with those of the
general public. Each percentile on the score report shows how strong that ability is for the client
compared to the nationwide sample.

Clients may have trouble understanding the Job Zone concept.

Before scheduling clients to take the Ability Assessment, you could explain the concept of Job Zones.
Give them a copy of the Job Zone descriptions and walk them through the descriptions, pointing out
how each of the Job Zones differ. Show them how the levels of preparation increase as you go from
Job Zone 1 to Job Zone 5.

Clients might have a hard time deciding whether to use their Current or Future Job Zone to explore
careers.

Suggest that clients with little work experience, who have not yet decided how much education to
pursue, select a Future Job Zone. This will allow them to consider a wider range of occupational
goals.

Clients may have a difficult time understanding the concept of Future Job Zone.

Encourage clients to think about themselves in the future. What do they want their “occupational
lives” to be like? Stress to clients that indicators of their abilities must be combined with actual or
future education, experience, and training before suitable occupations can be identified. Explain
how Job Zones relate to education and training: the higher the Job Zone, the more education and
training they will need. Encourage them to spend time with the lists of occupations. If they are
having a hard time comprehending it, work through it with them.
Clients might have difficulty distinguishing between Job Zones that are next to each other (e.g.,
the difference between Job Zones 3 and 4).

Clients should pay particular attention to the “Related Experience” category within Job Zones. This
section of each description can help clients figure out the differences among Job Zones.

Clients might need more “familiar” examples of occupations that fit into a particular Job Zone to
really understand the Zone.

You may want to look at related occupations, which are included in occupations, to find other
examples of occupations within a Job Zone. Encourage your clients to pay close attention to the
information provided for each of the Job Zones. This includes descriptions of the type of education
and experience required, as well as occupations that might fit in each zone.

Clients may feel that their results don’t reflect their true abilities or the occupations that they
would like to pursue.

Remind clients that they can look across all the Job Zone lists, and they can even explore occupations
of interest based on their special skills, talents, or knowledge that are not listed.

Clients may want to discuss their results with someone else.

Encourage clients to talk to someone who may help them better understand their results. Someone
who knows them may be able to help explain their results. Of course, a teacher or school counsellor
who has a background in career guidance also may provide help.

Clients may be unsure of their results.

Remind clients that there are other Career Assessment Tools that they can use. The results of other
tools may guide them to jobs similar to the ones indicated by the Ability Assessment, or they may
point to different directions for exploring the world of work.

Clients may feel that the results aren’t useful to them.

Remind them that the Ability Assessment is only a tool. Provide them with other avenues for career
exploration, such as online occupations on the website. If they have strong feelings about what it is
they would like to do, they should explore those paths.

Advise clients that after six months they might want to take the AP again, especially if they weren’t
focused or had trouble understanding the procedures for completing the instrument.

Development of Ability Assessment tool

The Ability Assessment was developed as one of the Career Exploration Tools, which help determine
a client’s standing on abilities, interests, and work values. The occupations that have been linked to
the Career Exploration Tools are the 1110 occupational titles. A client’s score profile(s) from the
completed assessment tool(s) is compared to occupational-specific information. The occupations
with score profiles that most closely correspond to the client’s score profile are suggested as
promising options for career exploration.
The development information provided here is at a fairly basic level of technical detail to give the
wide range of users of the Ability Assessment an introduction to the technical underpinnings of the
tool. It is important to have a fundamental understanding of the Ability Assessment technical
characteristics in order to be comfortable with the psychometric qualities of the instrument and to
use the Ability Assessment in a manner that is most beneficial to your clients.

Forms development process: changes and improvements

The Ability Assessment was developed and extensive changes were made to the instructions and to
the way in which scores are reported to facilitate the Ability Assessment tool’s intended use for
career counselling, career exploration, and career planning purposes. The changes to the Score
Report and interpretation of results reflect a focus on comparing an individual’s profile of abilities
with the profiles of occupations, rather than using cut-off scores.

The technical improvements to the Ability Assessment tools were undertaken to improve on the
cognitive portions of the GATB (Parts 1 through 6) while maintaining high professional standards. As
the project evolved, other specific objectives were incorporated:

 reducing test speededness and susceptibility to coaching,

 revising scoring procedures,
 developing items free from bias,
 assembling tests as parallel to each other as possible,
 improving the aesthetics of the tests, and
 revising the answer sheets and other materials.

Data Collection

In developing the new forms, extensive data collection was conducted. Each revision to the forms
was subjected to a try-out phase, after which any warranted modifications were made to test items,
to the test, or to the answer sheet. Briefly, the data collection involved the following:

 A primary sample of employment service applicants, which was considered representative of

offices serving the working population in terms of gender, ethnicity, age, and educational
level.

 Secondary sources of participants were identified from employed workers, community

groups or associations, high school and college students, and vocational training centres.

 Sample members could not have taken the GATB within a 12-month period immediately
prior to testing.

Data analyses, which conformed to the particular needs of the power or speeded test items,
produced item calibration and test dimensionality and led to the selection of items for the final
versions of the Ability Assessment. For the power tests, items were selected to produce tests fair for
candidates of all backgrounds, as parallel as possible, that improve upon measurement properties of
prior GATB Form A, and with measurement that is uniformly precise over a broad range of abilities.
For the speeded tests, items generally were selected to maximize the ability of the tests to
discriminate between those high and low on an attribute, while minimizing any negative impact on
various subgroups. The final step in the forms development was to assess the equivalence of the
forms on a total test-score basis to ensure that expected scores of equally able persons were
essentially the same.

Equating Study

An equating study was conducted between the Ability Assessment forms and the old forms of the
GATB (A and B). GATB Forms A through D each include 12 tests that constitute 9 aptitude scores. The
aptitude scores are scaled to a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 20 in the GATB norming
population. The equating study was conducted to investigate how similar the forms were and
whether the improvements made for the Ability Assessment forms would affect the ability to use
existing validity data to support the Ability Assessment.

Three primary samples were included in the equating study:

 The independent-groups sample was used to equate the Ability Assessment forms and the
old GATB forms. The 5,892 examinees were assigned in approximately equal numbers to
complete one of three forms.

 The repeated measures sample was used primarily for comparing the reliability and
construct validity of the new and old forms. Part of the sample was used as supplemental
data for the equating analysis. Each of the 2,611 examinees was administered two forms of
the GATB in a design of eight conditions.

The results of the equating study indicate that there is sufficient similarity between the new and old
forms. Average subgroup performance levels were similar across the new and old forms, and
reliabilities for the new forms were generally higher than for the old forms.

Construct validity analyses indicate that GATB validity data can continue to be used for the new
forms.

Procedures for generating the occupation-specific ability score profiles

Occupation-specific ability score profiles (OAPs) were developed for each occupation. These profiles
would allow AP users to link their AP results directly to occupations, thus enabling them to conduct a
more focused career search. The OAPs were originally developed using a combination of information
from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and archival validity data for GATB. New OAPs were
recently computed because (a) many occupations have changed in nature over the past 10 or more
years, and (b) the occupation database now contains a number of New and Emerging occupations
that do not have profile scores. Updates were accomplished using occupational descriptor data
collected as part of content model to create new assessment scores. All updated OAPs were
conducted on the 2008 release of occupational database.

Procedures for generating the updated occupation-specific ability assessment profiles required two
stages:

Stage 1: Determining the Most Accurate Approach to Computing New OAPs

The first step in updating the OAPs was to link Content Model constructs (i.e. Knowledge, Skills,
Abilities, and Generalized Work Activities) to the six Ability Assessment dimensions by five
occupational expert raters. Expert raters linked constructs to the six Ability Assessment dimensions
only if they determined the construct underlying the Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Generalised
Work Activities was the same as the construct underlying the Ability Assessment dimension. No
Generalized Work Activities were linked to any of the six Ability Assessment dimensions. Overall
agreement among the five raters was high (98.1%). A meeting was held to discuss contested linkages
and decisions were made during the meeting to retain or remove the contested linkages.

Subsequent to the linkage process, extensive analyses were conducted to determine the most
accurate approach to computing the OAPs. Results of these analyses suggested the OAPs should be
computed: (a) using a unit-weighted combination of the Importance and Level scales, and (b) using
all 3 scales measuring Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities, where appropriate, it was found “Control
Precision” did not add any explanatory power to these scales).

Stage 2: Computing and Validating the New OAPs

Preliminary validation analyses were computed using data from the system and the previously
computed OAPs. Validation was gathered from (a) Job Zone evidence, (b) face validity evidence, and
(c) comparison of the newly computed OAPs to previously computed OAPs.

Job Zone validity analyses found that occupations in higher Job Zones (e.g., 4, 5) tended to score
higher on cognitively loaded Ability Assessment dimensions, such as Arithmetic Reasoning. In
contrast, occupations in lower Job Zones (e.g., 1, 2) tended to score higher on physical Ability
Profiler dimensions, such as Motor Coordination. Considering Job Zone classifications are
determined mainly from an educational requirement basis, this pattern of findings was consistent
with expectations, providing Job Zone validation evidence for the newly computed OAPs.

Face validity evidence was obtained through results suggesting the newly computed OAPs were
yielding logically consistent occupations from individual score profiles. For example, a sample profile
that has high Arithmetic Reasoning and Computation scores on the Ability Assessment yielded the
suggested occupations of Mathematicians, Actuaries, and Mathematical Technicians.

Lastly, the newly computed and previously computed OAPs overlapped to an extent, but were
clearly distinct. Correlations between the two versions of the corresponding scales ranged from -.59
to .87 (Mean r = .14). When the sample was limited to 50 occupations that have changed little over
the last 10-15 years, the correlations ranged from -.43 to .84 (Mean r = .29). This conclusion was
further supported with pattern similarity analyses using a combination of cluster and discriminant
function analysis.

From a qualitative perspective, these results suggest the newly computed OAPs are valid for
matching individual scores on Ability Assessment dimensions to occupations. Overall, validation
results suggest the newly computed OAPs will serve the intended purpose of matching job seekers
to potential careers for which they are best suited.

Linking individual ability assessment scores to occupations

Since the Ability Assessment was developed from GATB forms, in order to permit proper
interpretation, client scores must be compared to an appropriate norming group. GATB Forms A
through D are linked to appropriate norming samples through score calibration procedures. This
section describes the calibration procedures that link the Ability Assessment to the GATB norm
group and thus allow for proper interpretation of Ability Assessment scores. All of these procedures
are performed by the Ability Assessment Scoring Program. The information presented below
provides an overview of the steps the software completes to provide meaningful Ability Assessment
scores. The overview includes a description of the generation of a person’s scores using equating
information, the matching algorithm developed to link client scores to occupations, and the process
of selecting occupations for display on the client’s personalized score report, including the use of Job
Zones.

Assume that a client has completed the Ability Assessment, Form 1. The client then has raw scores
on Ability Assessment exercises. These 6 scores are first calibrated to the corresponding converted
scores for GATB Form A. An equating study provides the requisite information for beginning the
calibration. Specifically, the report for the equating study contains equating tables that translate
Ability Assessment Forms 1 and 2 raw test scores to GATB Form A converted scores. Converted
scores show the contribution of a given test to each composite of which it is a component. Equating
tables are provided for the following tests: Arithmetic Reasoning, Vocabulary, Three-Dimensional
Space, Computation, Name Comparison, and Object Matching. Several tests are missing from this
list. First, Form Matching was excluded. Second, there are no versions of the psychomotor tests, so
the related abilities require no equating-tables—rather a percentile score is obtained.

Matching Algorithm

The purpose of the Career Exploration Tools is to identify the set of occupations that most closely
correspond to a client’s abilities, interests, and/or work values. The key consideration in choosing a
matching algorithm was to maximize the potential career exploration opportunities for the client.
The algorithm should not unduly restrict clients from exploring occupations that they might not
currently have the ability or education to perform. The algorithm is needed to identify occupations
that the client could attain, given appropriate education, training, and or experience, as judged from
observing a client’s current array of abilities.

The matching algorithm for the Ability Assessment compares the client’s scores on the six abilities to
the estimated occupation-specific ability score profile. Occupations with score profiles that most
closely correspond to the client’s score profile qualify as suggested candidates for the client’s career
exploration. The correlation coefficient serves as the index of correspondence. The correlation
provides numerical profiles and is the approach most vocational counsellors prefer for describing
profile correspondence.

If a client’s profile correlates equally with two or more occupations, the occupations are ordered
from lowest to highest on an analytical value (d, the Euclidean distance). This value forms an index of
the proximity of the person profile to the occupation profile. This distance measure introduces level
into the matching process. The goal is to increase the face validity of the selected occupation by
minimizing the likelihood of strongly recommending occupations for which the person is highly
under- or overqualified.
Using Education and Training Data for Assigning Occupations to Job Zones

To help users successfully explore careers, the program includes information on the level of
education, experience, and training needed for each occupation. Occupations are sorted in to five
categories, called Job Zones, originally developed using the Specific Vocational Preparation (SVP)
data. The five Job Zones are ordered from Job Zone 1, with occupations requiring the lowest levels of
education, experience, and training, through Job Zone 5, containing occupations with the highest
needed education, experience, and training. Job Zones are provided with Ability Assessment score
profiles so that users can consider the level of preparation needed for success in a particular
occupation. Job Zones help users further focus their career exploration on occupations that more
closely match their current or potential education, experience, and training.

To ensure currency, assigned Job Zones are re-evaluated and reassigned, according to incoming
occupation data on needed education, experience, and training. The five Job Zones are
categorized/defined by these data, and occupations are assigned to Job Zones based on this
information. Job Zone updates occur on the same schedule as data for other Content Model
domains, such as Skills and Knowledge. Job Zones are updated for approximately 100 occupations
annually.

Four trained analysts follow an eight-step procedure in assigning each O*NET occupation to a Job
Zone:

1. independent review of the occupation’s characteristics, particularly its description and tasks;

2. review of needed education level, as reported by survey respondents, and assignment of an

initial Job Zone;

3. review of related work experience and on-the-job training needed, as reported by survey
respondents, and adjustment of the step (2) initial assignment, as appropriate.

Education, experience, and training questionnaire responses relate to the five Job Zones as follows:

Education Related Work Experience On-the-Job Training Job

Zone
Less than High School None None, short demonstration, 1
or
training up to 6 months

High/Secondary School Up to 1 Month More than 6 months, up to 1 2

year
Sr More than 1 month, up to 2 More than 1 year, up to 2 3
Secondary/Intermediate years years
Bachelor’s Degree More than 2 years, up to 6 More than 2 years 4
years
Bachelor’s Degree Plus More than 6 years

4. comparison of initial Job Zone assignment with the occupation’s previous assignment and its
education and training classification;
 5. review of initial Job Zone assignment from a career ladder perspective. Occupations lower in
career progression should be assigned to lower Job Zones and occupations higher should be
assigned to higher Job Zones, such as Physical Therapists, Physical Therapist Assistants, and
Physical Therapist Aides.

6. review of the occupation’s initial Job Zone from an occupation similarity perspective, such as
an engineering occupation’s initial Job Zone as compared to final Job Zone assignments of
other Engineering occupations.

7. comparison of the two analysts’ initial independent Job Zone assignments for each
occupation. Non-matching assignments are identified for detailed review by two senior
analyst/managers; and

8. independent review of analyst-assigned Job Zones by the senior analyst/managers and final
Job Zone assignment for each occupation.

By combining information on needed education, experience, and training in a single rating, an

occupation’s Job Zone provides the client with a single, interpretable indicator of vocational
preparation. This enables the client to use both their ability profile and their current or planned level
of education, experience, and training to identify occupations appropriate for career exploration.

Occupations Listed

Once the client/occupation match is completed, the Ability Assessment Scoring Program selects a list
of occupations considered most promising for career exploration. The client score profile must
contain the following six ability scores: Arithmetic Reasoning, Computation, Verbal Ability, Spatial
Ability, Clerical Perception, and Form Perception. After calculating the correlation coefficient
between the client score profile and each occupation score profile, the scoring program next applies
a series of decision rules to the results. The occupations that satisfy the various decision rules appear
on the Ability Assessment Score Report.

The scoring program lists a minimum of 10 occupations on the score report for each of the five Job
Zones, regardless of the magnitude of the client/occupation profile correlation. Occupations are
presented in descending order based on the correlation. The Occupations for which the
client/occupation correlation is of sufficient magnitude are denoted by an asterisk as “strong
matches.” The degree of correlation that must be attained depends upon the number of scores in
the client profile.

Hence, there is a separate cut-off for profiles having six, seven, eight, and nine scores. The Ability
Assessment Scoring Program uses double precision math to calculate the correlation between client
and occupation profiles. At a minimum, correlations are truncated to 10 decimal places. A client’s
score report may contain as many as 25 occupations in each Job Zone, but occupations 11-25 appear
only if they represent strong matches.

Summary
The Ability Assessment, as part of the Career Exploration Tools, provides clients with a highly
flexible, informative vehicle for exploring the world of work. Using information about individual
attributes from any or all of the three Profilers (Ability, Aptitude and Work Values), clients are
presented with the occupations that most closely correspond to their array of abilities, interests, and
valued work outcomes.

Determining the fit of a client’s score profile to the score profiles of occupations assumes the
presence of occupation-specific profiles. Expert raters linked constructs to the six Ability Assessment
dimensions only if the construct underlying the Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities domains was the
same as the construct underlying the Ability Assessment dimension.

Extensive analyses were conducted and results determined the new OAPs should be computed:

1. using a unit-weighted combination of the Importance and Level scales and

2. using all 3 scales measuring Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities, where appropriate.

Subsequent validation analyses provided support that the newly computed OAPs will serve the
intended purpose of matching job seekers to potential careers for which they are best suited.

Commonly Asked Questions

Below are some commonly asked questions that users have regarding this tool. The answers
provided will enable you to ensure that clients enjoy their experience and receive accurate,
meaningful results.

What reading level is the Ability Assessment designed for?

The Ability Assessment was designed for use with a wide variety of populations, including
school/college students, job seekers, workers in transition, etc. It is suggested that clients have a
minimum of a sixth grade reading level to take the Ability Assessment. Clients below this level may
not be able to adequately understand the information in the Ability Assessment.

What age levels was the Ability Assessment designed for?

The Ability Assessment was designed for clients who are 12 years of age and older.

How long will it take clients to complete the Ability Assessment?

The complete Ability Assessment takes approximately 2 hours to complete.

Can clients complete the Ability Assessment on their own?

No. The tool was designed to be completed under standardized administration conditions with one
or more assessment advisors. This provides for the most useful and reliable information, which will
help clients better understand their abilities and their relationship to occupations. The score report
provided to clients, however, was designed to be self-interpretable.
Aptitude Assessment

After completing the Aptitude Assessment module, clients will be able to:

 Identify the model on which the Aptitude Assessment is based and describe the six “interest
areas”

 Discuss the Holland's Vocational Personality Theory

 Administer the Aptitude Assessment tool to clients

 Interpret the results of the Aptitude Assessment to counsel clients.

This module will introduce you to the theory of work of John Holland, a prominent career choice
theorist. Theory and research document the fact that individuals are likely to perform better and
achieve satisfaction in work when they perform job duties that allow them to engage in activities in
which they have interest and skill.

Holland Codes

John Holland’s Theory of Career Choice (RIASEC) maintains that in choosing a career, people prefer
jobs where they can be around others who are like them. They search for environments that will let
them use their skills and abilities, and express their attitudes and values, while taking on enjoyable
problems and roles. Behaviour is determined by an interaction between personality and
environment.

Holland asserts that people of the same personality type working together in a job create an
environment that fits and rewards their type.

Within this theory there are six basic types of work environment, which correlate directly to the
personality types. Holland emphasises that people who choose to work in an environment similar to
their personality type are more likely to be successful and satisfied. This idea is important as it shows
Holland’s theory can be flexible, incorporating combination types.

Holland’s theory takes a problem-solving and cognitive approach to career planning. His model has
been very influential in career counselling. It has been employed through popular assessment tools.
The US Department of Labour and National Institute for Career Education have been using the
RIASEC model for "Aptitude Assessment" since 1990s.

Summary of Holland's Theory

Holland's theory can be summarized in 6 statements:

1. In our culture, most people are one of six personality types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic,
Social, Enterprising, and Conventional.

2. People of the same personality tend to "flock together." For example, Artistic people are
attracted to making friends and working with Artistic people.
 3. People of the same personality type working together in a job create a work environment
that fits their type. For example, when Artistic persons are together on a job, they create a
work environment that rewards creative thinking and behaviour -- an Artistic environment.

4. People who choose to work in an environment similar to their personality type are more
likely to be satisfied and successful. For example, Artistic persons are more likely to be
successful and satisfied if they choose a job that has an Artistic environment, like choosing
to be a dance teacher in a dancing school -- an environment "dominated" by Artistic type
people where creative abilities and expression are highly valued.

5. How you act and feel at work depends to a large extent on your workplace environment. If
you are working with people who have a personality type like yours, you will be able to do
many of the things they can do, and you will feel most comfortable with them. It means that
you probably should choose an occupation whose type is the same as, or similar to, your
personality type.

6. Since individuals are multi-faceted, Holland realized that one wouldn't simply fall into a
single category. Most people would fall into multiple categories. Each letter of your Holland
Code represents the top three types into which you could be categorized, based on each
one's first letter. For example, your code may be CES (Conventional, Enterprising, Social).

Understand Holland’s RIASEC Codes

The vocational theory of John Holland is an excellent example of a trait and factor theory. Let’s start
by looking as some of the assumptions of trait and factor theories.

1. People have unique characteristics.

2. Occupations have unique characteristics.
3. Both people and occupations, these characteristics can be measured.
4. Individuals have greater satisfaction in jobs when they can work in jobs matched to the
characteristics they hold.

We are going to look at John Holland’s work in terms of four concepts.

The first concept is that all people can be described as a combination of two or more of six
personality types. There are several ways in which a person can learn what his or her type is. One
way is to use an aptitude assessment tool. There are also informal ways of learning one’s code, such
as describing the six environments and having the participant select the top one and second highest
and so forth. Or playing informal kinds of activities such has something called the Holland Party
Game. Typically the personality type of a person is expressed as a three letter code. The first letter
tells you the most dominant personality type. The second letter tells you the second most dominant
and so forth. Let’s examine each of the types.
Each letter or code stands for a particular "type":
Realistic (Doers), Investigative (Thinkers), Artistic
(Creators), Social (Helpers), Enterprising
(Persuaders), and Conventional (Organizers)."

Holland’s Six Personality Types

Realistic:

 These are people who really love activities that include practical, hands-on problems and
solutions.
 They enjoy dealing with plants, animals, and real-world materials like wood, tools, and
machinery.
 They like to make and repair things.
 They like to work alone but enjoy outside work
 They have wonderful manual and mechanical skills.
 They generally do not like occupations that mainly involve doing paperwork.

Investigative:

 These folks like work activities that have to do with ideas and thinking more than with
physical activity.
 They typically are good at math and science.
 They have good skills of observation.
 They view self as precise, and intellectual.
 And they really like to search for facts and figure out problems mentally.
 They generally avoid leading, selling, or persuading people.

Artistic:

 These are people who are imaginative, spontaneous.

 They like work activities that deal with the artistic side of things, such as forms, designs, and
patterns
 They like to do creative activities like art, drama, crafts, dance, music, or creative writing.
 They have talent in one or more art forms.
 They view self as expressive, original, and independent.
 Typically, they like to entertain others, so they like to work with both ideas and people.
 They prefer settings where work can be done without following a clear set of rules and
generally avoid highly ordered or repetitive activities.

Social:

 People who like work activities that assist others and promote learning and facilitate the
development of other people.
 They like to teach, give advice, help and solve social problems in a variety of ways.
 Likes to help people like teaching, giving guidance and counselling, nursing, or giving
information.
  They really like to work face-to-face with people.
 They prefer to communicate more than to work with objects, machines, or data.
 They view self as helpful, friendly, and trustworthy.

Enterprising:

 They like work activities that have to do with starting up and carrying out projects, especially
business ventures.
 They love to lead and persuade people and make decisions but their motive is different from
the social type.
 The like to sell, manage, and influence.
 They like taking risks for profit and sometimes manipulate in order to administer a task.
 They prefer action rather than thought
 They have fairly high value on authority and power and perhaps on money as well.
 They view self as energetic, ambitious, and sociable.

Conventional:

 These are people who really need to keep the world in order.
 They like work activities that follow set procedures and routines
 They have high skills on orderliness and organization.
 They prefer work in which there are precise standards rather than work in which you have to
judge things yourself.
 They prefer to work with data and detail, facts, and figurer rather than with ideas.
 They generally avoid ambiguous, unstructured activities and like working where the lines of
authority are clear.
 They view self as orderly, and good at following a set plan.

An individual’s personality is a composite of all of the types and each individual has a unique
combination. Persons are typically attracted to two or three areas of interest.

These two or three letters are a person’s “Holland Code.” For example, a code of “RES” means the
person has a personality and interests that are associated with the Realistic type and to a lesser
extent, has personality and interests that are associated with the Enterprising and Social types.

Let’s go on to Holland’s Second Concept. That concept is that just as people can be coded by these
six types, so can environments, such as jobs, schools, and leisure activities. Occupations are assigned
Holland Codes by expert raters who are able to read a job description and to give it a code. Or
sometimes hundreds of people who are in a given occupation and say that they love it are given a
Holland assessment tool, so that the actual code from the assessment can be calculated for an
occupational group.

Now let’s look at some career possibilities for each code.

R: Doers (Realistic)

People who are “independent, stable, persistent, genuine, practical, thrifty, no-nonsense, physical,
athletic, mechanical and down-to-earth individuals”. They prefer "things rather than ideas or people,
being outdoors, using tools, operating machines, interacting with animals or plants, and working
with their hands." They also value the "natural, concrete, and tangible."

Sample careers and major subjects include:

 Aerospace/Aeronautical Engineer (with Investigative)

 Agriculture
 Anthropology/Paleontology (with Investigative)
 Architect (with Artistic and Enterprising)
 Astronomy (with Investigative)
 Carpenter (with Conventional and Investigative)
 Chef(with Enterprising and Artistic)
 Chemistry/Chemist (with Investigative and Conventional)
 Computer engineering/Computer science/Information technology/Computer programmer
(with Investigative and Conventional)
 Dance (with Artistic)
 Dentist (with Investigative and Social)
 Engineer (with Investigative and Conventional)
 Environmental science
 Fashion design (with Artistic and Enterprising)
 Fine Artist, Including Painter, Sculptor and Illustrator (with Artistic)
 Firefighter (with Social and Enterprising)
 Graphic designer (with Artistic and Enterprising)
 Interior design(with Artistic)
 Model (people) (with Artistic and Enterprising)
 Musician (with Artistic and Enterprising)
 Nurse (with Social, Conventional, and Investigative)
 Park Naturalist (with Social and Artistic)
 Personal trainer (with Enterprising and Social)
 Photographer (with Artistic and Enterprising)
 Physical therapy (with Social and Investigative)
 Driver
 Surgeon (with Investigative and Social)
 Veterinarian (with Investigative and Social)
 Web design/Web Development Specialist (with Artistic)
 Zoologists and Wildlife Biologists(with Investigative)
 Construction worker
 Short order cook
 Automotive service technician
 Baker
 Production welder
 Bricklayer
 Spraying machine operator
 Highway maintenance worker
  Electrician
 Construction workers
 Automotive mechanics
 Electricians and technicians

I: Thinkers (Investigative)

People who are "intellectual, introspective, inquisitive, curious, methodical, rational, analytical, and
logical." They prefer "tasks that are scholarly, scientific, technical, or medical activities that involve
thought, observation, investigation, exploration, and discovery. They like to solve problems, perform
experiments, and conduct research."

Sample careers and major subjects include:

 Actuary(with Conventional and Enterprising)

 Archivist/Librarian (with Social and Conventional)
 Carpenter (with Conventional and Realistic)
 Chemistry/Chemist (with Realistic and Conventional)
 Computer engineering/Computer science/Information technology/Computer programmer/
Analyst (with Realistic and Conventional)
 Counsellor (with Social and Artistic)
 Dentist (with Realistic and Social)
 Dietician (with Social and Enterprising)
 Economics (with Conventional and social)
 Engineer (with Realistic and Conventional)
 Finance (with Enterprising and Conventional)
 Lawyer (with Enterprising and Social)
 Nurse (with Realistic, Conventional, and Social)
 Pharmacist (with Social and Conventional)
 Physical therapy (with Social and Realistic)
 Physician (Medical school/Medical research) (with Social)[14]
 Physics
 Professor (all fields)
 Psychology/Psychologist/ Psychiatrists (with Social and Artistic)
 Surgeon (with Realistic and Social)
 Technical writer (with Artistic and Conventional)
 Veterinarian (with Realistic and Social)
 Zoologists and Wildlife Biologists(with Realistic)
 Biologist
 Geologist
 Hazardous waste technician
 Market research analyst
 Medical lab technologist
 Archaeologists
 Forensic science technicians
A: Creators (Artistic)

People who "are creative, intuitive, sensitive, articulate, expressive, unstructured, original,
nonconforming, and innovative, who rely on feelings, imagination, inspiration and who are
spontaneous and open-minded." They prefer to "work with ideas, abstractions, and concepts." They
also enjoy work that is "literary, verbal, visual, and aesthetic" and excel in "art, music, dance,
drawing, painting, sculpting, drafting, writing, drama, communicating, design, fashion."

Sample careers and major subjects include:

 Architect (with Realistic and Enterprising)

 Broadcast journalism (with Enterprising)
 Clergy (with Social and Enterprising)
 Chef (with Enterprising and Realistic)
 Counsellor (with Investigative and Social)
 Dance (with Realistic)
 Fashion design (with Realistic and Enterprising)
 Fine Artist, Including Painter, Sculptor and Illustrator (with Realistic)
 Graphic designer (with Enterprising and Realistic)
 Interior design(with Realistic)
 Model (people) (with Realistic and Enterprising)
 Musician and Singers (with Enterprising and Realistic)
 Park Naturalist (with Social and Realistic)
 Psychology/Psychologist (with Social and Investigative)
 Public relations (with Enterprising)
 Photographer (with Realistic and Enterprising)
 Teaching (K-12) (with Social)
 Technical writer (with Investigative and Conventional)
 Web design/Web Development Specialist (with Realistic)
 Illustrator
 Makeup artist
 Singer
 Actor
 Floral designer
 Creative writers

S: Helpers (Social)

People who "are kind, generous, cooperative, patient, caring, helpful, empathetic, tactful, and
friendly." They prefer tasks that involve "socializing, helping others, teaching, teamwork, social
interaction, relationship building, humanitarian, educational, philanthropic, interpersonal, and
service-oriented."

Sample careers and major subjects include:

 Archivist/Librarian (with Conventional and Investigative)

  Clergy (with Artistic and Enterprising)
 Community Organizer
 Counsellor and Advisor (with Investigative and Artistic)
 Customer service (with Conventional and Enterprising)
 Dentist (with Investigative and Realistic)
 Dietitian (with Investigative and Enterprising)
 Economics (with Investigative and Conventional)
 Educational administration (with Enterprising and Conventional)
 Firefighter (with Realistic and Enterprising)
 Fitness Trainer and Aerobics Teacher (with Enterprising and Realistic)
 Human Resources (with Conventional and Enterprising)
 Lawyer (with Investigative and Enterprising)
 Nurse (with Realistic, Conventional, and Investigative)
 Park Naturalist (with Realistic and Artistic)
 Pharmacist (with Investigative and Conventional),
 Physical therapist (with Realistic and Investigative)
 Physician (Medical school/Medical research) (with Investigative)
 Psychology/Psychologist (with Investigative and Artistic)
 Social Advocate
 Sociology
 Social Work
 Surgeon (with Realistic and Investigative)
 Teachers (K-12) (with Artistic)
 Veterinarian (with Investigative and Realistic)
 Food server
 Tour guide

E: Persuaders (Enterprising)

People who "are adventurous, ambitious, assertive, extroverted, energetic, enthusiastic, confident,
optimistic, dominant, persuasive, and motivational." They prefer work that involves "leadership,
business, politics, public speaking, being in charge, taking risks, debating, and competing."

Sample careers and major subjects include:

 Actuary(with Investigative and Conventional)

 Architect (with Artistic and Realistic)
 Business owner
 Buyer
 Chef and Head Cook (with Realistic and Artistic)
 Clergy (with Artistic and Social)
 Customer service (with Conventional and Social)
 Dietitian (with Social and Investigative)
 Educational administration (with Social and Conventional)
 Entrepreneur
  Fashion design (with Artistic and Realistic)
 Finance (with Conventional and Investigative)
 Firefighter (with Social and Realistic)
 Fitness Trainer and Aerobics Teacher (with Realistic and Social)
 Fundraising,
 Graphic designer (with Artistic and Realistic)
 Human Resources (with Conventional and Social)
 Broadcast journalism (with Artistic)
 Lawyer and Judge (with Investigative and Social)
 Management/Management Consultant
 Market Research Analyst
 Model (people) (with Artistic and Realistic)
 Musician (with Artistic and Realistic)
 Photographer (with Artistic and Realistic)
 Public relations (with Enterprising)
 Real Estate (with Conventional)
 Retail salesperson
 Telemarketer
 Manicurists and pedicurists
 Executive or manager
 Music or sports promoter

C: Organizers (Conventional)

People who are "conscientious and conservative, logical, efficient, orderly, organized, thorough and
detail-oriented." They are individuals who "value precision and accuracy." They excel in "practical
tasks, quantitative measurements, and structured environments" and who "follow the rules." They
prefer work that involves "accounting, statistics, mathematics, numerical activities, and office
settings.

Sample careers and major subjects include:

 Accounting/Tax advisor
 Actuary(with Investigative and Enterprising)
 Archivist/Librarian (with Social and Investigative)
 Carpenter (with Realistic and Investigative)
 Chemistry/Chemist (with Investigative and Realistic)
 Computer engineering/Computer science/Information technology/Computer programmer
(with Investigative and Realistic)
 Customer service (with Enterprising and Social)
 Economics (with Investigative and social)
 Educational administration (with Social and Enterprising)
 Engineer (with Investigative and Realistic)
 Finance (with Enterprising and Investigative)
 Human Resources (with Enterprising and Social)
  Math teacher
 Nurse (with Realistic, Social, and Investigative)
 Pharmacist (with Social and Investigative),
 Real Estate (with Enterprising)
 Technical writer (with Artistic and Investigative)[14]
 Secretary
 Receptionist
 Office worker
 File clerk
 Cashier
 Library assistant
 Shipping clerk

Now that we’ve looked at the types of occupation that are related to each personality type, let’s
look at Holland’s third concept. Holland’s third concept is that people of a given type very much
enjoy being in an environment of the same or similar type. So we can understand why people of a
given type really are attracted to an environment which is of the same or very type because they can
feel much fulfilled there.

A person is likely to be most satisfied and productive if there is a fit between their personality-
interest type and their work environment.

Holland and others have researched this theory for more than 40 years. One of the things they
studied is the order in which these six types should be organized. And that’s where Holland famous
Hexagon comes in.

The letter R can be placed at any point on the hexagon, but once it is placed, the order, in clockwise
fashion, must be R, I, A, S, E, C. For this reason, the theory is sometimes called the RIASEC theory.
Notice the order of these six types. Personality types or jobs that are next door to each other are
most alike. For example, people like the R type are most like the I types and the C types. This is what
is meant by consistency. On the other hand, types most unlike each other are across the hexagon
from each other, just as in the relationship of R and S or I and E.

According to Holland, higher degrees of consistency within personality types can make it easier to
make career decisions and maintain career achievement and satisfaction.

As you might surmise from your knowledge of the six different types, there are fewer jobs available
that combine opposites (such as CA, IE, RS, and the reverse of these letters). Also, people with the
opposite codes might feel torn between doing one kind of work or the other. If jobs that combine
these opposites cannot be found, it may be better to assist the individual to choose one of the two
areas for work and to attempt to use the other in community, home, or leisure activities

Differentiation simply refers to the shape of the profile of a person’s interest. If a person takes an
aptitude (interest) assessment and you plot the scores, differentiation simply refers to the shape of
the profile. Let’s look at several profiles. This is a well-differentiated profile.
Notice that it has one R which is quite low and there’s S which is quite high. There are four others
that are in-between. Just by the shape of this profile, you can tell that this person has well-defined
interests. So a person seeking to help this person find a training program or a job would starting out
with training programs or jobs that are coded with the Holland Code letters S and E.

You will note that one of the six Holland types, S, is markedly higher than the other five. The second
area, E, is also high; and related to the order on the hexagon, these two are next door to each other.
So, this is a well-differentiated, consistent profile. There should be a number of jobs that combine
these two interest areas, and this person is ready to make a choice.
Let’s look at another profile, a high flat profile. Notice that all six of the Holland Codes are high,
although S and E are slightly higher than the rest. But that does not mean much with this type of
differentiation. This person has really high interests in all six areas. So if you were working with this
person, you would help him or her to decide which of these six areas to use in work and which to use
in other life roles. You might determine which occupations by considering the person’s educational
level, the job market related to each of the groups, and the values of the person.

It appears that this person has several strong areas of interest. This gives you a lot to work with, but
the person will need help in deciding which one or two areas of interest to use in work. You can
consider the person’s work skills, educational level, risk factors, and the job market in assisting this
offender to identify possible jobs.
Here’s the third and final profile, a low flat profile. This person does not have well defined interests.
This person would be a challenge to work with. You might start by eliminating areas where the
person does not have skills and those where the job market is really tough.

It appears that this person has no strong areas of interest. This person may not have been exposed
to any of these areas of work. This kind of profile can also reflect depression, but you should not
jump to this conclusion. A person with this type of profile needs extensive assistance to eliminate
areas that are impossible due to lack of education or other reasons, and to focus in on remaining
areas.

A profile is a graphic representation of the “peaks and valleys” of a person’s interests and self-rated
skills. It shows us what areas are high (if any) and how defined an individual’s interests are.

1. Use the NICE’s Aptitude Assessment tool to profile your own or a client’s score.
2. Looking at the tally of the scores on your assessment booklet, place a dot across from the
numerical value of each of your six scores.
3. Draw a line through the six dots.
4. Look at the shape of client’s interest profile and discuss with the client.

The Aptitude Assessment tool:

 Measures 6 types of work interests which are compatible with the Holland’s Vocational
Personality Theory
  Is in paper-and-pencil and online computerised versions

 Takes approximately 40 minutes to complete

Steps to complete the Aptitude Assessment

 Step 1 is to complete the paper-and-pencil version of the assessment. To complete Step 1,

you will respond to a set of tasks (i.e., build a set of cabinets) by indicating whether you like
doing this task, don’t like doing this task, or are unsure whether you like doing this task.

 Step 2 is to identify jobs linked with your interests, and note in which Job Zone they fall. Job
Zones are based on either your current level of preparation or a future level of preparation.
You decide which type of Job Zone to pursue. Looking at the jobs in each Job Zone may help
you decide which Job Zone to pursue.

 Step 3 is to select a Job Zone. Job Zones are based on either your current level of
preparation or a future level of preparation. You decide which type of Job Zone to pursue.

Job Zones

Job Zone 1 - Little or No Preparation Needed

Overall Experience - No previous work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is needed for these
occupations.

For example, a person can become a general office clerk even if he/she has never worked in an
office before.

Education - May require high school.

Job Training - A few days to a few months.

Examples:

 Bus drivers
 General office clerks
 Home health aides
 Waiters/Waitresses

Job Zone 2 - Some Preparation Needed

Overall Experience - Some previous work-related skill, knowledge, or experience may be helpful in
these occupations, but is usually not needed.

Education - May require high school with some vocational training. In some cases, an intermediate
or bachelor’s degree could be needed.

Job Training - A few months to a year working with experienced employees.

Examples:

 Dry wall installers

 Fire inspectors
 Flight attendants
 Pharmacy technicians
 Tellers

Job Zone 3 - Medium Preparation Needed

Overall Experience - Previous work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is needed for these
occupations.

Education - Most occupations in this zone require training in vocational schools, related on-the-job
experience, or an intermediate’s degree. Some may require a bachelor’s degree.

Job Training - One or two years of training with both on-the job experience and informal training
with experienced workers.

Examples:

 Dental assistants
 Electricians
 Wardens

Job Zone 4 - Considerable Preparation Needed

Overall Experience - A minimum of two to four years of work-related skill, knowledge, or experience
is needed for these occupations.

Education - Most require a bachelor’s degree, but some do not.

Job Training - Several years of work-related experience, on-the-job training, and/or vocational
training.

Examples

 Accountants
 Chefs and head cooks
 Computer programmers
 Historians

Job Zone 5 - Extensive Preparation Needed

Overall Experience - Extensive work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is needed for these
occupations. Many require more than five years of experience.

Education - A bachelor’s degree is the minimum formal education required.

Job Training - Most of these occupations assume the person already has the required skills,
knowledge, work related experience, and/or training.

Examples

 Lawyers
 Instrumental musicians
 Physicists/Surgeons
 Counselling psychologists

Interpreting Results

It is important to realise that an individual's interests may not be described by just one of the six
interest categories. In fact, Holland suggests that most people will have interests in several of the
areas, but they will probably have one Interest Area that is stronger than the others. Like people,
environments or occupations may not be best represented by one Interest Area. They also may be
represented better by several areas. For this reason, several Interest Areas usually serve as the most
appropriate representation of an individual's interests, as well as the interests that a work
environment (or an occupation) satisfies.

Holland's theory also suggests that the RIASEC areas are related in a hexagonal fashion based on
how similar they are to one another. According to Holland, adjacent Interest Areas are most similar
to one another (e.g., Artistic with Investigative and Social). Interest Areas that are opposite to one
another (e.g., Enterprising and Investigative) are most dissimilar. Interest Areas that are alternate to
one another (Realistic and Enterprising or Investigative and Social) have an intermediate
relationship.

The steps to identifying the jobs in student's Interest Area(s) and Job Zone are given in Assessment
Report.

(a) It identifies Primary and Secondary Interest Areas. These are the Interest Areas in which
students have the highest and next-to-highest scores.

(b) Selects your Current or Future Job Zone.

Sampling Plan

The sampling plan for this study attempted to target groups of users most likely to use the Aptitude
Assessment upon its completion. Groups identified included:

1. School students
2. College students
3. Job seekers
4. Workers in transition (employed workers looking for different jobs/careers).

The sampling plan also called for a high proportion of minority participants, an equivalent number of
participants from each gender, and participants drawn from a variety of regions across the country.

Participants
Data collection sites included schools, colleges, universities and employment agencies located in six
states across the country. A total of 1,123 participants provided useable responses. The sample
consisted of approximately equal numbers of males and females, a high degree of ethnic diversity, a
broad distribution of age groups, and represented a variety of education and employment situations.

In addition, each participant completed a brief demographics questionnaire, along with a comment
sheet eliciting feedback regarding the Aptitude Assessment.

Item Analyses

A set of general item-level screens were conducted to eliminate items with extremely low and high
endorsement rates, items with large differences in endorsements between males and females, items
with large differences among racial/ethnic groups, and items that did not correlate highly with their
intended scale. An item pool of 461 items was retained after these screens.

Scale Analyses

The purpose of this stage of the analyses was to select from the pool of items a total of 180 items
that would create six internally consistent scales which would:

1. demonstrate strong conformity to the hexagonal model of Holland’s (1985a) theory of

vocational interests;
2. contain maximum training level and occupation representation; and
3. minimize gender and race/ethnic endorsement rate differences.

Based on their correlations with the six RIASEC scales, items were rank ordered in terms of their
conformity to the structure of the hexagonal model. The structure specifies that an item should
correlate most highly with its target scale (i.e., the scale it was intended to measure), next strongest
with its adjacent scale, less strongly with its alternative scales, and least strongly with its opposite
scale.

Items were eliminated if they correlated less with their target scale than with another scale. Then,
four judges with psychometric backgrounds, as well as training in Holland’s (1985a) vocational
theory and the Aptitude Assessment taxonomy, independently made qualitative selection judgments
based on the following information:

1. item-to-scale correlations,
2. gender and race/ethnic endorsement rate differences,
3. training level requirement ratings, and
4. work content area assignments.

Judges discussed their respective selections and agreed on an initial selection of 30 items per scale.

Finally, starting with the initial 30-item scales, different item combinations within scales were
examined to maximize the empirical relationships of items within scales, as well as to minimize the
relationship of each item with non-target scale totals. For example, an item was replaced if its
removal significantly increased the scale’s internal reliability.
Final Assessment Tool and User Testing

The current Interest Inventory began with the 180 items developed under the Aptitude Assessment
project, and was further refined to include a final pool of 150 items on six 25-item scales. Initial user
feedback had suggested that the length of the original instrument (90 questions, 180 items) might
prove problematic as user attentiveness began to fade toward the end of the test. Reliability & Item
Analysis revealed that the reliability of the test would not be significantly compromised by dropping
an additional 30 items to create a final 75-question test (with 150 total items). Items were reviewed
for how well they discriminated the population into Holland's model and how much variance they
exhibited. Weaker items were removed. Confirmatory factor analysis (test of the factor loadings and
inter-correlations of items) also helped verify which of the original 180 items proved of most
predictive of Holland’s hexagonal model.

The final instrument included six scales of 25 items. An extremely wide representation of work
activities was achieved. One or more items were present in approximately 80% of the work content
areas of the original taxonomy.

Pilot User Study

In a pilot user study, the Interest Inventory and Aptitude Assessment were administered to 232
individuals from a variety of backgrounds (e.g., age and employment status). All six scales in the
Interest Inventory demonstrated a high degree of internal reliability, with coefficient alphas ranging
from .93 to .96. Although differences exist between the Interest Inventory and the Aptitude
Assessment, examination of the instruments’ scale inter-correlations reveals a very high correlation
between corresponding scales, ranging from .73 (Artistic) to .48 (Enterprising), with a median value
of .62. Overall, the correlational relationships between the two instruments provide evidence of
both convergent and discriminant validity.

Evaluation & Measurement

A large-scale study was conducted to examine the psychometric properties — reliability and validity
— of the Aptitude Assessment. The study required gathering information from three groups of
individuals with diverse backgrounds.

Participants and Design

The majority of the data was gathered from 1,061 individuals from schools, colleges and other
training institutes agencies located in four regions across the country. These participants were
administered the Aptitude Assessment. Two groups of individuals also participated in the test-retest
portion of the study. School and college students were administered one of the instruments on two
separate occasions, with approximately one month elapsing between the two administrations.

Reliability

The internal consistency estimates across all the RIASEC scales were very high (ranging from .93 to
.96), indicating that each of the scales “hangs together” well. The instrument also had a high
estimate of test-retest reliability (ranging from .81 to .92), providing evidence that clients’ scores are
likely to be similar if the instrument is taken more than once within a short period of time.
Development of Aptitude Assessment Tool

This briefly describes the development of the Aptitude Assessment tool, an application of Holland's
(1997) RIASEC work environments, for the 1,122 careers in the database. Each career profile consists
of six numerical scores in invariant order (R-I-A-S-E-C) indicating how descriptive and characteristic
the occupation is for each of the work environments. These profiles were instrumental in the
development of the Aptitude Assessment tool, allowing users to compare their own Interest
Inventory scores to that of each career in the database and to determine which careers best “fit”
their interest profile.

Two time-honoured occupational classification methods – empirical (discriminant analysis) and

judgment (expert ratings) – were used in the development of the Aptitude Assessment tool. The
reliability, validity, and economy of the methods were compared. On all criteria examined, the
judgment method did at least as well as or better than the empirical method. Discriminant analysis
was very efficient in classifying an occupation into one RIASEC category (assigning a primary code),
but provided little or no information for the other five categories. In contrast, the judgment method
generated a reasonable distribution of values across the work environments.

Empirical Method

With the empirical approach, numerical RIASEC profiles were developed for all the careers in the
database using discriminant functions – a type of classification analysis used to produce probabilities
of group membership. In this case, the discriminant analysis would yield probabilities of group
membership for each of the RIASEC categories.

In general, this approach was very successful in identifying primary group membership, but there
were concerns about the reliability of non-primary group probabilities. This statistical method is
generally applied to the identification of single group membership, rather than probabilities across
multiple categories. Therefore, a complementary approach would be needed to assess and verify
numerical profiles across the all six RIASEC categories, including both primary and non-primary
groups.

Judgment Method

In order to overcome the inherent limitations of the empirical approach, an additional approach,
called the judgment method, was used to generate numerical profiles. For this method, three expert
judges rated occupations on how descriptive and characteristic they were of each of the six RIASEC
work environments. Using a seven-point scale, the judges assessed the RIASEC categories for each
career in the database. Profiles were then developed from the mean scores of the three judges and
submitted for review by a secondary panel.

In general, the ratings from trained judges proved both effective and reliable. In particular, it proved
more effective than the empirical method in deriving numerical profiles for the five non-primary
RIASEC categories. Statistically, the posterior probability levels compared to the discriminant
method were much less extreme among the six RIASEC categories, providing reasonable proportions
for all six categories. Cross-classification tables and values for Cohen’s Kappa were also examined to
assess the degree of agreement between the two methods. Cohen’s Kappa is a measure of
agreement between method pairs that involve unordered categories, with higher values indicating a
higher level of agreement, and values above .70 considered acceptable. The two methods described
here had a Kappa of .72.

Here are some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).

1. What reading level is the Aptitude Assessment designed for?

The Aptitude Assessment was designed for use with a wide variety of populations, including
workers in transition, unemployed persons, school and college students. It is suggested that
students have a minimum of seventh grade reading level to take the Aptitude Assessment.

2. What age level is the Aptitude Assessment designed for?

The Aptitude Assessment was designed for students who are 12 years of age and older.
Individuals younger than 12 may not have had broad enough life experiences to respond to
the Aptitude Assessment questions. Also, individuals younger than 12 probably have not
really crystallised their interests. They probably are still in the process of developing strong
interests.

3. Where is the best place to "administer" the Aptitude Assessment?

Individuals can take the assessment in a variety of places. Students can take it at home, in
school, in the library, or in another quiet location where they will be able to concentrate and
respond seriously to Aptitude Assessment questions.

4. How long will it take students to complete the Aptitude Assessment?

The Aptitude Assessment takes anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes to complete.

5. Can students complete the Aptitude Assessment in one session?

Yes. The assessment was designed to be completed in one session. Students should try to
answer all questions at one time. This will provide continuity to the administration process
and will help students better understand the information the Aptitude Assessment is trying
to convey.

6. How many students can participate in an Aptitude Assessment at one time?

The maximum number for a group Assessment should be about 20 and minimum 3.
Work Attitude Assessment

In this module, you’ll learn how to complete and administer the Work Attitude Assessment.

After completing the Work Attitude Assessment module, clients will be able to:

 Identify the model in which the Work Attitude Assessment is based and describe the six
“work values”.

 State the step-by-step process to take the Work Attitude Assessment

 Interpret the results of the Work Attitude Assessment to counsel clients.

The Work Attitude Assessment:

 Assess what is important to the client.

 Measure six types of work values, which are based on Dawis and Lofquist’s Theory of Work
Adjustment

 Are available in a paper-and-pencil and a computerised version

 Take approximately 30 minutes to complete

Work Value Areas:

Work values have a critical role in the practical application of the Theory of Work Adjustment. The
Work Attitude Assessment is based on “needs” that represent specific aspects of work that an
individual requires to be satisfied. When individuals are dissatisfied, it is most likely because their
important needs, which tie into broader work values, are not being met. However, people differ in
what they consider important on their ideal jobs.

The Work Values fall into one of the following six categories, based on Dawis and Lofquist's Theory
of Work Adjustment:

1. Achievement
2. Independence
3. Recognition
4. Relationship
5. Support
6. Working Conditions

The Work Attitude Assessment test directs individuals to sort 21 statements describing specific
needs into five levels of importance. Each of the needs matches up to one of the six work values the
assessment tool was designed to measure: Achievement, Working Conditions, Recognition,
Relationships, Support, and Independence. The rank ordering of an individual’s needs provides the
information necessary to determine the person’s most important work values (i.e. the rules-based
algorithm takes into account the rank ordering of the needs). Listed below are the six work values
along with the specific needs that fall under each value:

A - Stands for Achievement

Specific needs related to “achievement” include:

 Ability utilisation
 Achievement

People who value achievement often work in one of the following job categories:

 Fire fighters
 Police officers and detectives
 Airline pilots
 Surgeons

I - stands for Independence

Specific needs related to “independence” include:

 Creativity
 Responsibility
 Autonomy

People who value independence often work in one of the following job categories:

 Sales representatives
 Training and development specialists
 Astronomers

R - Stands for Recognition

Specific needs related to “recognition” include:

 Advancement
 Recognition
 Authority

People who value recognition often work in one of the following job categories:

 Models
 Athletes
 Education administrators
 Music directors

R - Stands for Relationships

Specific needs related to “relationships” include:

  Co-workers
 Social service
 Moral values

People who value relationships often work in one of the following job categories:

 Child care workers

 Occupational/physical therapist assistants
 Librarians
 Athletic trainers

S - Stands for Support

Specific needs related to “support” include:

 Company policies and practices

 Supervision, human relations
 Supervision, technical

People who value supporting others often work in one of the following job categories:

 Office clerks
 Retail salespersons
 Machinists
 Loan officers

W - Stands for Working Conditions

Specific needs related to “working conditions” include:

 Activity
 Independence
 Variety
 Compensation
 Security
 Working conditions

People who value working conditions often work in one of the following job categories:

 Telemarketers
 Agricultural inspectors
 Desktop publishers
 Actuaries

Steps to Completion

1. Complete the Work Attitude Assessment pencil-and-paper assessment.

 The first step is to complete the paper-and-pencil version of the Work Attitude Assessment
by sorting 21 statements into 5 categories from most important to least important. These
contain statements about what you value most in your work.

2. With the help of the software, identify the three highest Work Values.

Rank your Work Values using the Work Attitude Software to determine the overall scores in
each of the six Work Values and identify the two highest-ranking Work Values.

3. Select a Job Zone (current or future).

Select a Job Zone. If you do not want to make any adjustments in your Job Zone, you can
keep the Job Zone you selected when completing the Aptitude Assessment.

4. Select occupations that are linked to your work values, based on your selected Job Zone.

Identify occupations that are linked with your Work Values, based on your Job Zone. Again,
this step is similar to the step you performed when completing the Aptitude Assessment.

Theory of Work Adjustment

A brief overview of the Work Attitude Model, the model that evolved from the Theory of Work
Adjustment to create a more practical measure of the influence of values and their influence on
work satisfaction. Familiarity with this model will provide an understanding of the use of work values
for career exploration, and help clarify the design and intent of the Work Attitude Assessment test
and its associated scoring reports.

An overview of Work Values Clusters, the incarnation of the Work Attitude Model and the primary
instrument used to group and categorize individual work needs into a more generalized values
system.

Historical Background: The Theory of Work Adjustment

The Work Attitude Assessment is based on Dawis and Lofquist’s Theory of Work Adjustment. The
theory, which has evolved over four decades of research, provides a comprehensive model for
conceptualizing the interaction between individuals and their work environments.

The interaction is made up of an initial “fit” between individuals and their environment, as well as
dynamic elements that characterize ongoing adjustments made by both the individuals and the work
environment. In other words, individuals with particular characteristics are best suited for jobs that
have work demands that correspond with those characteristics. Individuals depend on the work
environment to reinforce their characteristics or “needs,” and the work environment depends on
individuals to meet the demands or “requirements” of the job. The greater the correspondence
between the individual and the work, the greater the likelihood of job satisfaction, performance, and
tenure. Once an individual is in a particular job, however, over a period of time the job will affect the
characteristics of the worker, and the worker will affect the demands of the job.
While the theory is quite extensive and complex, there are four major concepts that are critical to its
understanding. A summary of each concept is listed below:

1. The fit between the needs of an individual and the reinforcers provided by the work
environment affects how satisfied the individual is with work.

2. The fit between the abilities of an individual and the ability requirements of the occupation
affects what the theory calls “satisfactoriness.” This term refers to how satisfied the work is
with the individual. To make the theory a little more user-friendly, “satisfactoriness” can be
thought of as how well the individual “performs” on the job.

3. Performance influences satisfaction, and satisfaction influences performance.

4. How long an individual stays on the job (i.e., tenure) is affected by both satisfaction and
performance.

Stated simply, the four concepts above advocate that when exploring careers, individuals are more
likely to be satisfied by jobs that meet their needs, are more likely to perform better if they have the
abilities necessary to do the job, will perform better if satisfied, and will be more satisfied the better
they perform. Lastly, individuals will stay on the job longer if satisfied and performing well.

Practical Application: The Work Values Model

Work values have a critical role in the practical application of the theory. Needs, which were referred
to above, are specific aspects of work that an individual requires to be satisfied. They are specific
work characteristics that are important to individuals. Examples include: security, variety,
responsibility, and creativity. However, individuals, especially those exploring careers, may not think
about what is important to them in the world of work in such specific terms. Instead, they tend to
think about work more globally. They often have general standards of what is important. This is
where work values enter into the equation. The vast number of specific needs identified by years of
empirical research can be grouped together according to broad themes of importance. These
groupings make up what the lay person generally recognizes as work values. Examples of work
values include: achievement, recognition, and independence.

Therefore, a more practical application of the theory involves replacing the concepts of an
individuals’ needs with work values. For example, it is the fit between the work values of an
individual and the reinforcers provided by the work environment that affects how satisfied the
individual is with work. If work gives individuals what they value, then they tend to be satisfied with
their jobs.

When they are dissatisfied, it is most likely because their important work values are not being met. It
is necessary to stress, however, that people differ in what they consider important on their ideal job.

Career Scoring Studies

The research design for generating work values score profiles for 1,122 different careers involved
obtaining score profiles from two sources:
 (a) regression equations that produced estimated work values scores, and
(b) an SME (Subject Matter Expert) study in which work values scores were derived from expert
judgments of occupational analysts.

Regression Study

The regression study met with some success, yielding equations that accurately estimated scores for
three of the six work values. Specifically, the procedure was to:

(a) obtain a sample of jobs having work values scores,

(b) regress these scores on variables that measured important characteristics of the jobs, and
(c) evaluate the degree of relationship between the predicted and actual scores.

Variables included GATB Aptitude Ratings, Temperament Ratings, and DOT data on environmental
conditions and physical demand of various occupations for a total of 61 input variables.

The first step was to reduce the number of variables while retaining as much of the variance present
in the scores as possible. A principal components analysis of the 61 variables yielded a 13-
component solution.

The next step was to regress each of the six work values dimensions on the 13 principal components
scores. 50 samples containing a randomly drawn 60 percent of the occupations (here, 108
occupations) were created. For each of the 50 samples, a regression equation was calculated for
each of the six work values dimensions. Thus, for a given work values dimension, there were 50
estimates of the coefficient of determination (R²), and each component score had 50 estimates of its
dimension-specific regression coefficient. The mean R² values were respectable, with three of the
values scores being predicted quite well.

SME Study

The SME study comprised three phases:

(a) initial development of materials for rating the work values score profiles,
(b) a Pilot Study to refine the materials and determine whether non-incumbent raters could
provide reliable results, and
(c) a Main Study in which work values score profiles for all 1,122 careers in the database were
created based on their ratings on the 21 need statements.

During the SME study, occupationally anchored rating scales were developed for judges to rate the
extent to which the 21 needs measured by the test are reinforced by various occupations. A Pilot
Study in which nine non-incumbent raters (I/O psychology graduate students) rated 30 occupations
on the 21 needs demonstrated that (a) raters using the rating scales could provide reliable ratings,
and (b) the judges provided work values profiles that correlated .50 or higher with profiles for the
same occupations published in 1986 (Stewart, 1986) by incumbent raters.

In the Main Study, 17 occupational analysts and I/O psychology graduate students each rated the
work values score profiles for half of the 1,122 careers. Raters provided profiles of adequate and
acceptable reliability, with mean and median interrater reliabilities in the .80s. The average
correlation between need profiles from incumbents and from SMEs was .37, with incumbents rating
their jobs higher on the needs. For 33 percent of the occupations, the top two needs were identified
by SMEs and incumbents.

Summary

The work values scoring project produced reliable, valid measures of work values and occupation
profiles of value scores. Two methods of producing profiles (one empirical, one rational) were
investigated. The data obtained from these investigations supported the use of the SME ratings of
work values scores for the careers that appear in the CareerMatch™ system. For example, profiles
generated by the SMEs evidenced appreciable reliability, respectable correlation with profiles
obtained by job incumbents, and reasonable patterns of work values scores across occupations.

Work Attitude Assessment Development

The Work Attitude Assessment (WAA) system required the development of various matching
algorithms. Procedures were needed to compare a user’s score profile generated from one of the
four career assessment tests (e.g., aptitude, attitude, ability and skills) with occupational score
profiles for each of the careers in the database. These matching procedures needed to help users
identify the occupations that constitute a “strong” match with client’s assessment information by
scoring and rank-ordering career matches. In addition, a procedure was needed for creating a
composite score that amalgamated individual test scores before generating overall match scores.

Due to the variety of score profiles produced by the tests (that also included differences in scale and
number of variables) several matching procedures were required. At a high-level, two theoretical
approaches were employed in the development of these matching algorithms:

(a) the creation of a Shape Index, which would measure correlation from the pattern of the
scores, rather than the absolute level or amount of each score, and

(b) the creation of a Distance Index which would measure correlation from levels in a vector
space.

Shape Index

With some of the tests, it was important that the comparison of the user’s score profile and the
score profiles of each of the careers be based on the shape or pattern of the scores, rather than the
absolute level or amount of each score. For example, with the Aptitude Assessment, there was no
concern about directing a user to explore careers that were “under” or “over” a critical level of
interest. Rather, it was more important to identify patterns of interests, rather than absolute levels.
The goal was to direct users to occupations that tended to have the same high interests, as well as
the same low interests – in other words, similarities in pattern or shape.

When a user provides a score profile from one of the tests, the correlation coefficient serves as the
index of correspondence. The correlation between a client’s profile (X) and a career profile (Y) is
given mathematically as follows:
 Where and and and are the means and standard deviations of X and Y, respectively, and N
is the number of scores to be correlated (i.e., the number of scores constituting the user’s profile).

The correlation indexes the similarity of the shape (but not the level) between the client and
occupation profiles and is the correspondence index most vocational counsellors prefer. The
correlation can range from -1.0 to +1.0. A correlation of +1.0 indicates that the rank orders of user
and career scores are identical, whereas a correlation of -1.0 indicates that the rank order of a user’s
score is opposite the rank order of a career score. A value of 0.0 indicates no correspondence
between the user score profile and the career score profile. For simplicity in presentation and
greater user comprehension, the correlation coefficient was transformed into a percentage between
0% and 100%.

Distance Index

When determining the correspondence between a client score profile and corresponding career
score profiles where level is a relevant factor, the matching procedure needs to incorporate distance
as well as shape in determining similarity. For example, in the Skills Profiler, the level of scores
matters as much as the pattern, and therefore needs a second index to refine the profile
correspondence. Here, a normalized Euclidean Distance algorithm was chosen to determine
similarity.

The Euclidean distance between two measures X and Y is given mathematically as follows:

where X and Y are scores from the user and career profiles, respectively, and k is the number of
scores in a given score profile. The d value indexes the proximity of the user profile to the career
profile. Thus, Euclidean distance introduces level to the matching process. The matching program
uses d in the matching algorithm for the Skills Profiler, for example, because the goal is to increase
the face validity of the selected careers by guiding users to careers that not only correspond to the
pattern of their skills, but for which they are also more likely to be qualified rather than under- or
over-qualified.

Composite Scoring

A correlation coefficient algorithm again served as the index of correspondence in development of a

composite scoring system. The computation of the correlation, however, required a few extra steps.

To calculate the correspondence between a composite user profile and career score profiles
appropriately, two factors had to be addressed. First, the scores on the various tests are all scaled
differently. Due to differences in scaling, the composite correlations between user and career
profiles would likely be skewed. For example, consider a hypothetical composite client profile
comprising scores from the Interest Inventory (six scores, ranging from 0-25) and the Work Values
Assessment test (twenty scores, ranging from 1-5). Without adjusting for differences in scale, the
Work Values Assessment will naturally produce higher correlations and influence the composite
score more than the Interest Inventory. Therefore, the scores for each test under consideration must
be standardized within each measure before calculating the composite correspondence.

Second, because each test yields a different number of scores to the composite score profile, the
correlation between a user profile and a career profile will primarily depend upon the measure that
contributes more scores to the profile. Therefore, the composite algorithm needed to correct for
differences in the number of questions as well scale.

The solution was found in counter-weighting and averaging correlations such that differences in the
number of questions, as well as scale, were offset. A mean weighted correlation, however, is not a
final index of correspondence. Whenever one averages correlations, one typically applies Fisher’s r
to z transformation to each of the correlations before averaging, and the Fisher inverse
transformation after:

To summarize, the mean index of correspondence between a user’s composite score profile and a
career’s total score profile was calculated by (a) determining the correlation between the user and
career profiles for each test, (b) transforming each of those correlations to Fisher z values, (c)
calculating the mean of the Fisher z values, and (d) transforming the mean z value back to the
correlation metric.

Evaluation & Measurement

The evaluation of the Work Attitude Assessment psychometric characteristics was part of a large,
multi-stage study. The portions of this large scale study that are relevant to the evaluation and
measurement of the WAA will be summarized in the following sections.

Reliability

The term “reliability” refers to the degree to which a measurement procedure is free from
unsystematic errors of measurement and the degree to which it gives the same values if the
assessment procedure is repeated. An individual responding to a measure is likely to have different
results if he or she took the assessment again. Systematic differences in scores (e.g., improvement
on a test taken at two different times because the individual’s knowledge has increased between
tests) should not be considered the unreliability of a measure. But an individual’s results may change
when measured more than once on the same measure because of unsystematic effects (e.g., miss-
marking a response to an item; feeling tired one day, but not the next). Such unsystematic
differences are considered unreliability. Low reliability limits the ability to have confidence about
individuals’ results from a single measurement (i.e., results may or may not lack precision). The
higher the reliability of a measure, the more confidence you can have in the information obtained
from the measure.

There are several ways to assess the reliability of measurement, depending on the type of
consistency with which one is most concerned, including test-retest reliability, alternate or parallel
forms reliability, and internal consistency. The following subsections will present the evidence
gathered on the WAA that related to each of these types of reliability.

Test-Retest Reliability

This type of reliability refers to the consistency of results when the same individual is assessed on
the same measure at two points in time. This information is obtained by looking at the degree of
relationship (i.e., correlation) between an examinee’s scores obtained on the measure at different
points in time. Estimates of test-retest reliability are particularly useful if the characteristic being
measured is not expected to change over the time between the two measurement periods (e.g., a
measure of personality characteristics of normal adults at two points in time that are a month apart,
as opposed to a measure of knowledge administered before and after a course on the subject of the
measure). Given that work values of adults are considered to be relatively stable characteristics, it
would be expected that individuals’ responses to the WAA should be stable across time.

Two hundred and thirty school/college students were administered the WAA twice, with a two-
month interval between the first assessment and the second assessment. Evidence of the WAA’s
ability to reliably measure individuals’ top-ranked work value was moderately high, with a person’s
top work value being the same between assessments 62 percent of the time. However, the
correlation for the first administration’s six work value scores and the second administration’s six
work values scores ranged between .35 (Achievement) and .58 (Support), indicating that the WAA
has a low-to-moderate ability to reliably measure each of the six work values over the two month
interval. Overall, this evidence reinforced the use of the WAA to help clients discover their highest
work value, while also demonstrating that the WAA should not be used by clients to determine the
rank order or profile of all six of their work values.

Alternate or Parallel Forms Reliability

This type of reliability is the evaluation of similar responses by the same individuals on forms which
have been created to be alternative or parallel forms of the same measure. This estimate of
reliability was important because the pilot studies of the instrument were conducted with pen-and-
paper versions of the test, while the current version is an online one. Similar results for the same
individuals on these different mediums would support using the mediums interchangeably. The
same sample of 230 school/college students used in the test-retest reliability study described above
were also administered the computerized version, allowing them to provide data relevant to
alternate forms reliability. The scores of the two measures were reformulated in a manner that
allowed for direct comparison and corrected for “ipsatization” problems — this correction reduces
the adverse effects of forced-choice rank order information on a correlation coefficient (e.g., it
reflects the impaired ability of users to rate associated needs in similar ways given that they have
used up the available spaces at their preferred level of importance). The six work value scores
derived from both measures had correlations ranging from .70 to .80, with a median correlation of
.77. This indicates a relatively high agreement for the measurement of values between the two work
values measures.

Internal Consistency

This type of reliability is used to determine whether different items, which are measuring the same
subject on the same measure, have highly related results. For example, if a test included 10 items on
math ability and 10 items on reading ability, one would expect to see higher interrelationships within
the set of 10 math ability items and within the set of 10 reading ability items than between items
from the two different sets. Thus, internal consistency reliability is another type of reliability analysis
which can be applied to the WAA to assess the adequacy of its development. In terms of the WAA, it
would be desirable to have high internal consistencies among items within the same scale (i.e., the
needs that are used to measure each of the six work values).

The responses of 1,199 students and job-seekers drawn from 23 sites were used to examine the
internal consistency of the WAA. While the examination of internal consistency is important, the
rank order format of the WAA provides data that, for statistical reasons, inhibit its ability to
demonstrate high internal consistency values. The rank order format leads to the presence of
negative inter-item correlations, attenuating the measurement of internal consistency reliability. The
median coefficient alpha obtained for the sample was .20, indicating a very low level of internal
consistency. An examination of coefficient alphas for each of the six scales after the data were
“corrected for ipsatization” (i.e., reducing the adverse effects of rank order information) yielded an
average increase of .38 per scale, indicating that while the rank order format did in fact adversely
affect the coefficient alphas, the internal consistency of the six scales was, at best, moderate.

Validity

The term validity, as used here, refers to whether or not an assessment tool functions as it was
intended to function. The WAA was designed to measure work values in the same way as the MIQ
and as defined by the Theory of Work Adjustment (Dawis & Lofquist, 1984). Validity analyses for the
WAA focused on determining the degree to which the WAA and the MIQ appeared to be measuring
the same work values constructs. Further evidence of validity should be forthcoming in the next few
years.

Data from a sample of 550 students were used to analyse the similarity of scores obtained by the
WAA and the MIQ. Correlations between the scores obtained by both instruments for the work
values ranged from .30 to .49, which is fairly low. Two potential explanations for the low correlations
exist:

1. the previously mentioned attenuative impact of the WAA’s rank order format on the
correlation coefficient, and
2. the effect of the wording modifications that were made to the need statement items of the
WIL.

An examination of the correlations at the needs level indicated that, with one exception, all items
with a correlation of .40 or less contained modified text. This indicates that, at least to a small
extent, the wording changes adversely affected relations between the WAA and MIQ.
In order to examine the validity of the WAA (as defined above) without the impact of its rank format,
the consistency of the top work values obtained by the WAA and MIQ were compared. The top value
was the same for each pair of instruments approximately 57 percent of the time. The top value
obtained on the WIL was one of the top two values indicated by the MIQ 79 percent of the time.
However, the top two values on one of the measures matched the top two values on the other
measure 16 percent of the time.

Summary

The ability for the WAA to provide clients with a valid indication of their highest work value was
supported. However, similar to the conclusions drawn after the examination of the WAA’s reliability,
validation evidence did not support clients’ use of their results to determine the entire profile of
their work values. While more direct validity evidence should be forthcoming, at present the user is
cautioned to keep in mind the moderate relations just described.

Overall, the WAA demonstrated good reliability across the majority of reliability analyses. The test-
retest results showed moderate correspondence within individuals administered the WAA at two
times several weeks apart. Individuals had the same top value 62 percent of time. After the effects
of ipsatization were adjusted for, the correlations between the pen-and-paper and computerized
versions of the test were in the .70’s and .80’s, with a median of .77 (indicating that the measures do
have a degree of interchangeability). Internal consistencies were low, with a median value of .20,
due in part to the effects of ipsatization.

Here are some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What reading level is the Work Attitude Assessment designed for?

The Work Attitude Assessment was designed for use with a wide variety of populations,
including workers in transition, unemployed persons, college students and high school
students. It is suggested that clients have a minimum of an seventh grade reading level to
take the Work Attitude Assessment.

2. What age level is the Work Attitude Assessment designed for?

The Work Attitude Assessment was designed for clients who are 12 years of age and older.
The development of values is a process that occurs throughout a person's lifespan and is
modified by experiences. However, as individuals mature, values tend to become more
stable. By the time people enter the 7th grade (approximately 12); their values are stable
enough to be measured reliably.

3. Where is the best place to "administer" the Work Attitude Assessment?

Individuals can take the assessment in a variety of places. Clients can take it at home, in
school, in the library, or in another quiet location where they will be able to concentrate and
respond seriously to Work Attitude Assessment questions.

4. How long will it take clients to complete the Work Attitude Assessment?

The Work Attitude Assessment takes anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes to complete.

5. Can clients complete the Work Attitude Assessment in one session?

Yes. The assessment was designed to be completed in one session. Clients should try to
answer all questions and score the instrument at one time. More than one session is not
recommended for completion of the Work Attitude Assessment.

6. What are the 21 statements for?

Each statement contains a "need" statement that is related to one of the six Work Values
measured by the Work Attitude Assessment.

7. How many clients can participate in a Work Attitude Assessment at one time?

The maximum number for a Group Administration by ONE Advisor should be about 10 and
minimum 3 clients.
Dermatoglyphics – the science of finger
prints
Find a child’s talent at the fingertips!

The word dermatoglyphics comes from two Greek words (dermas - skin and glyphic - carve) and
refers to the friction ridge formations which appear on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet.
The scientific study and analysis of finger print are called dermatoglyphics.

Fingerprints and brain connections are established at the pregnancy stage when fetus is 13-19 weeks
old. The dermal ridges on our fingers are linked to the brain development. The dermatoglyphics
features are genetically determined and are influenced by environmental factors and disturbances at
the time of development in the womb.

Dermal ridge pattern formation began at 19 weeks during pregnancy and different regions of our
brain are reflected by our 10 fingerprints. Dermatoglyphics is DNA reflection of our brain.

The characteristics of epidermal ridges are:

Have you ever thought why finger prints of individuals are unique? Nature never does anything
which is meaningless. Every person has unique talent hidden in the brain which is depicted in a script
of fingerprints. Findings are:

 No two people have exactly the same finger prints, even the monozygotic (identical) twins.
Fingerprints on the right hand will not be the same as the ones on the left hand.

 While fingerprints will increase in size (from childhood to adulthood), dermatoglyphic

pattern remains unchanged throughout the life of an individual. If fingers are burnt, after
healing the wound; the new skin has exactly the same as original pattern.

 Both the nervous system and the epidermal ridges have a common origin from the ectoderm
in the embryo.

Dermatoglyphics is an innovative method that records and analyses a child’s ten fingerprints to
identify their natural talents, creative potential and learning styles. This will help parents to optimise
the most effective ways of nurturing their child.

Dermatoglyphics Terminology

What are Fingerprints?

 Raised ridges of skin on the hairless surfaces of hands and feet (Dermal Ridges)
 Primates and other animals have them
 Provide traction and every ridge contains a gland
Three Principals of Fingerprints

 Fingerprints have general ridge patterns that permit them to be classified

 To make fingerprints easier to search against large fingerprint databases, experts categorize
fingerprints into groups based on patterns in the ridges.

 There are a number of basic ridge pattern groupings which have been defined. Three of the
most common are loop, arch, and whorl.

Ridges

The skin on the inside surfaces of our hands, fingers, feet, and toes is ridged or covered with
concentric raised patterns. These ridges are called friction ridges and they provide friction making it
easier for us to grasp and hold onto objects and surfaces without slippage. It is the many differences
in the way friction ridges are patterned, broken, and forked which make ridged skin areas, including
fingerprints, distinctive.

Global Versus Local Features

Two types of fingerprint characteristics are used in identification of individuals: Global features and
local features. Global features are those characteristics that one can see with the naked eye and
include:

 Pattern Area
 Core Area
 Type Lines
 Delta
 Ridge Count Basic
 Ridge Patterns

The local features are known as minutia points. They are the tiny characteristics of fingerprint ridges.
Their two-dimensional arrangement is distinctive and is used for recognition. It is possible for two or
more individuals to have similar global features but still have different and distinctive fingerprints
because the local features, that is, the two dimensional arrangement of minutia points is different.

Global Features

Pattern Area - The pattern area is the part of the fingerprint that contains the global features.
Fingerprints are read and classified based on the information in the pattern area. Certain minutia
points that are used for final recognition might be outside the pattern area.

Core Point - The core point, located at the approximate centre

of the finger impression, is used as a starting reference point
for reading and classifying the print.

Type Lines - Type lines are the two innermost ridges that start
parallel, diverge, and surround or tend to surround the pattern
area. When there is a definite break in a type line, the ridge immediately outside that line is
considered to be its continuation.

Delta - A place where two lines run side-by-side and then diverge with a significant recurving line - a
triangle is formed. The delta is the point on the first bifurcation (forks into two different directions),
abrupt ending ridge, meeting of two ridges, fragmentary ridge. The delta is located directly in front
of the lines point of divergence. It is a definite fixed point used to facilitate ridge counting and
tracing.

Ridge Count - The ridge count is most commonly the number of ridges between the delta and the
core. To establish the ridge count, an imaginary line is drawn from the delta to the core; each ridge
that touches this line is counted.

Three classes of Fingerprints

Loops

The loop is the most common type of fingerprint pattern and 60% of the world’s population has
them.

o Ridges start on one side, rise towards the centre, and return back to the side they started
from
o Has 1 delta 2 types of loops
- Radial (thumb)
- Ulnar (pinkie)

Arches

The arch pattern is a more open curve than the loop. 5% of the world’s population has them. Start
on one side, rise towards the centre, then leave on the other side.

o No deltas
o There are 2 Types of arches
- Plain
 - Tented

Whorls

Whorl patterns occur in about 35% of all fingerprints and are defined by at least one ridge that
makes a complete circle.

o Has some ridges that form circles or spirals Has 2 Deltas

o 4 types of whorls

Plain Double Loop Central Pocket whorl Accidental whorl

Identification of Minutiae

 You must find 12 points of minutiae to match a print

 Label each with a number and a line to show its

location

 Make a key at the bottom of the two prints

Classification of Fingerprints

Identification is based on class and ridge patterns (minutiae) found on each individual print

1. Henry Classification System

o Five different levels of classification
o Primary Classification
 Creates a fraction
 25% of the world’s population is 1/1

RI /RT + RR/RM + LT/RL + LM/LI + LL/LR + 1/1

o Whorl = 16,8,4,2,1
o Arch and Loop = 0

2. Primary Classification
o A person has the following combination of prints on their ten fingers:
 RT=Arch RI=Whorl RM=Arch RR= Loop RL=Whorl

LT=Loop LI=Arch LM=Whorl LR=Whorl LL=Arch

RI/RT + RR/RM + LT/RL + LM/LI + LL/LR +1/1

16/0 + 0/0 + 0/4 + 2/0 + 0/1 + 1/1 = 19/6

The Primary Classification is 19/6

Early Dermatoglyphics Pioneers

Marcello Malpighi (March 10, 1628 – November 29, 1694)

Marcello Malpighi was an Italian physician and biologist regarded as the father of microscopical
anatomy and histology. Because of this work, many microscopic anatomical structures are named
after Malpighi, including a skin layer - lower epidermis (Malpighi layer).

Nehemiah Grew (26 September 1641 – 25 March 1712)

Nehemiah Grew was an English plant anatomist and physiologist, very famously known as the
"Father of Plant Anatomy". Grew is also considered to be one of the pioneers of Dactyloscopy. He
was the first person to study and describe ridges, furrows, and pores on hand and foot surfaces. In
1684, he published accurate drawings of finger ridge patterns and areas of palm.

Sir Francis Galton (16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911)

Galton was an English Victorian progressive, polymath, psychologist, anthropologist, eugenicist,

tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and
statistician. He was knighted in 1909. He was cousin of Douglas Strutt Galton and half-cousin of
Charles Darwin.

Galton was the first to apply statistical methods to the study of human differences and inheritance
of intelligence. He was a pioneer in eugenics, coining the term itself and the phrase "nature versus
nurture". As an investigator of the human mind, he founded psychometrics and devised a method
for classifying fingerprints.

Sir Edward Richard Henry (26 July 1850 – 19 February 1931)

Henry was the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis from 1903 to 1918. Between July 1896 and
February 1897, with the assistance of SI Azizul Haque and Hemchandra Bose, Henry developed a
system of fingerprint classification enabling fingerprint records to be organised and searched with
relative ease. In 1899, the use of fingerprints in court was recognised by the Indian Evidence Act.

Harold Cummins M.D. (May 1894 – May 12, 1976)

Dr Cummins achieved world recognition as the "Father of Dermatoglyphics". The findings of his
lifetime studies and the techniques he developed, known as the Cummins Methodology, are
accepted as important tools in tracing genetic and evolutionary relationships.
Harold studied all aspects of fingerprint analysis from anthropology to genetics, from embryology to
the study of malformed hands with two to seven fingers.

Roger Wolcott Sperry (August 20, 1913 – April 17, 1994)

Sperry was a neuropsychologist, neurobiologist and Nobel laureate who, together with David Hunter
Hubel and Torsten Nils Wiesel, won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his work
with split-brain research, left/right brain dominance.

Rita Levi-Montalcini (22 April 1909 – 30 December 2012)

Stanley Cohen (born November 17, 1922)

Working with Rita Levi-Montalcini (co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in 1986) at Washington University
in St. Louis in the 1950s, Cohen isolated nerve growth factor (NGF) and then went on to discover
epidermal growth factor (EGF).

Howard Earl Gardner (born July 11, 1943)

Gardner is an American developmental psychologist and Professor of cognition and education at

Harvard University. He has written hundreds of research articles and over twenty books that have
been translated into more than thirty languages. He is best known for his theory of multiple
intelligences, as outlined in his book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983).

Analysing brain through finger prints

Dermatoglyphics is like a map that leads one to understand his own potential and talents. by
Scanning fingerprints and its analysis discover brain in relation to creative potential and learning
styles of children and adults. By identifying a child's talent early, a parent is much easier in providing
the proper stimulus and direction.

Dermatoglyphics analysis interprets the potential of a child while the achievement of a child is more
influenced by right support from parents, teachers, and environment.

In the year of 1943, Dr Harold Cummins stated the theory of PI (pattern intensity) rate measuring, RC
value, 3 delta areas value, potency value, and different finger patterns with its different position.
This theory using PI value is more accurate compared with the earlier method that only used RC
measurement. Dr Cummins is universally acknowledged as the father of dermatoglyphics.

Discovering child's areas of intelligences and learning styles gives a clue on what activities they
should spend more time, so that s/he can acquire knowledge in a natural and more efficient way and
also to remove the 'trial and error' method of parenting.

Is Dermatoglyphics a form of fortune telling?

No, it is not a prophecy because it is based on research and scientific methods. Palmistry or
Chiromancy is the divination of the future by interpretation of the concave furrows of our palms.
The lines of the palms are impermanent and will change over time. On the other hand,
Dermatoglyphics is the science of analysing ridge counts of a person's fingerprints. It is based on
Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligence theory, Roger W. Sperry Left Right Brain Theory, Neil
Fleming's VARK model of learning style. This is not predicting someone's future happenings. It draws
inference through scientific methods about a person’s true inborn talents and learning styles. The
information contained in the Dermatoglyphics report will not change with age or time. Statistics
show that Dermatoglyphics assessment provides up to 92% accurate information of a person's
multiple intelligences and learning styles.

The Dermatoglyphics method is well appreciated by Times of India; editions of May 15, 2012, Jan 18,
2013, Dec 1, 2013, etc. and other prominent newspapers.

The Anatomy and theory of the Brain

The brain (cerebral cortex) can be divided into four

sections, known as lobes.

Prefrontal lobe (Psycho-Motor Association

Cortex) - Personality, moral, creative idea, will and
thought; execution and analysis

The Frontal lobe is located at the front of the brain and is associated with reasoning, motor skills,
higher level cognition, and expressive language. At the back of the frontal lobe, near the central
sulcus, lies the motor cortex. This area of the brain receives information from various lobes of the
brain and utilizes this information to carry out body movements. Disorder in the frontal lobe can
lead to changes in sexual habits, socialization, and attention as well as increased risk-taking.

Prefrontal lobe

The Prefrontal lobe, the anterior (front) portion of the frontal lobe also called the prefrontal cortex,
lying in front of the motor and premotor areas. This brain region has been implicated in planning
complex cognitive behaviour, personality expression, decision making and moderating social
behaviour. The basic activity of this brain region is considered to be orchestration of thoughts and
actions in accordance with internal goals. There is an integral link between a person's personality
and the functions of the prefrontal cortex

Parietal lobe (Sensory Association Cortex) - Space discrimination, understanding &

appreciation of space, arts and language capability

The Parietal lobe is located in the middle section of the brain and is associated with processing
tactile sensory information such as pressure, touch, and pain. A portion of the brain known as the
somatosensory cortex is located in this lobe and is essential to the processing of the body's senses.
Disorder in the parietal lobe can result in problems with verbal memory, an impaired ability to
control eye gaze and problems with language.

Temporal lobe (Auditory Association Cortex) - Centre of hearing function; language

comprehension
The Temporal lobe is located on the bottom section of the brain. This lobe is also the location of the
primary auditory cortex, which is important for interpreting sounds and the language we hear. The
hippocampus is also located in the temporal lobe, which is why this portion of the brain is also
heavily associated with the formation of memories. Disorder in the temporal lobe can lead to
problems with memory, speech perception, and language skills.

Occipital lobe (Visual Association Cortex) - Centre of visual function

The Occipital lobe is located at the back portion of the brain and is associated with interpreting
visual stimuli and information. The primary visual cortex, which receives and interprets information
from the retinas of the eyes, is located in the occipital lobe. Disorder in this lobe can cause visual
problems such as difficulty recognizing objects, an inability to identify colours, and trouble
recognizing words.

Brain Theory

The right brain-left brain theory grew out of the work of Roger W. Sperry, who was awarded the
Nobel Prize in 1981. For example, students who have a difficult time following verbal instructions
(often cited as a right-brain characteristic) can benefit from writing down directions and developing
better organisational skills. The nerves projecting from each hemisphere cross at the medulla,
causing the left side of the brain to control movement in the right of the body, and vice versa.

The studies demonstrated that the left and right hemispheres are specialized in different tasks. Right
brain corresponds to left hand and left brain with right hand.

The right hemisphere is involved when you are making a map or giving directions on how to get to
your home from the bus station. The right hemisphere can only produce rudimentary words and
phrases, but contributes emotional context to language. Without the help from the right
hemisphere, you would be able to read a word for instance, but you wouldn't be able to imagine
what it is.

The left side of the brain is normally specialised in taking care of the logical, factual, analytical and
verbal tasks. The left side speaks much better than the right side, while the right half takes care of
the space perception tasks and music, creativity and
emotions, for example.

Multiple Intelligence

The theory of multiple intelligences model was

proposed by Howard Gardner in his 1983 book Frames
of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Gardner
articulated 9 criteria for a behaviour to be considered
an intelligence. Although the distinction between
intelligences has been set out in great detail, Gardner
opposes the idea of labelling learners to a specific
intelligence. Each individual possesses a unique blend
of all the intelligences. Gardner firmly maintains that his theory of multiple intelligences should
"empower learners", not restrict them to one modality of learning.

Gardner argues intelligence is categorized into three primary or overarching categories, those of
which are formulated by the abilities. According to Gardner, intelligence is:

(a) the ability to create an effective product or offer a service that is valued in a culture,
(b) a set of skills that make it possible for a person to solve problems in life, and
(c) the potential for finding or creating solutions for problems, which involves gathering new
knowledge.

Gardner chose 9 abilities that he held to meet these criteria:

1. Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence - well-

developed verbal skills and
sensitivity to the sounds, meanings
and rhythms of words.

2. Mathematical-Logical Intelligence -
ability to think conceptually and
abstractly, and capacity to discern
logical or numerical patterns.

3. Musical Intelligence - ability to

produce and appreciate rhythm,
pitch and timber.

4. Visual-Spatial Intelligence - capacity

to think in images and pictures, to
visualise accurately and abstractly.

5. Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence -
ability to control one's body
movements and to handle objects skilfully.

6. Interpersonal Intelligence - capacity to detect and respond appropriately to the moods,

motivations and desires of others.

7. Intrapersonal Intelligence - capacity to be self-aware and in tune with inner feelings, values,
beliefs and thinking processes.

8. Naturalist Intelligence - ability to recognize and categorize plants, animals and other objects
in nature

9. Existential Intelligence - sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about human
existence, such as the meaning of life, why do we die, and how did we get here.
Explanation of Multiple Intelligences

Every person is born with 9 types of innate (God gifted) talent. Although dermatoglyphics may
identify a person’s potential, one may not be able to reach his/her full potential without training. If
your fingerprints identify that one has potential in art, but lack of training of discipline, one’s
potential would possible be hidden.

Linguistic-Verbal Intelligence

Linguistic-Verbal intelligence involves a strong ability to understand and use spoken and written
language. This can include the ability to express oneself effectively through speech or the written
word and the increased ability to learn foreign languages. Further, information is learned effectively
through the written word.

Strengths: Words, Language and Writing

Characteristics of Linguistic-Verbal Intelligence:

Word Smart children are able to use words well, both when writing and speaking e.g.

- Good at remembering written and spoken information

- Giving an oral presentation
- Writing or giving a news report
- Developing questions for, and conducting an interview
- Presenting a radio drama
- Creating a slogan
- Writing their own story problems
- Keeping a journal or diary
- Good at debating, giving persuasive speeches
- Able to explain things well
- Often uses humour when telling stories
- Likes word games
- Good at spelling

Ways to Enhance Linguistic-Verbal Intelligence:

Following are ways that teachers and individuals can enhance and strengthen their current linguistic-
Verbal intelligence:

 Write in a journal or blog

 Practice listening skills
 Create audio tapes
 Write a group story
 Learn a few new words each week
 Create a magazine or website devoted to something that really interests you
 Write letters, poems, stories, descriptions
 Play word games like crosswords
  Read more including books, magazines, newspapers, and jokes
 Debate with friends and family about issues important to you
 Write reviews on a variety of subjects. Examples could include: book reviews, movie reviews,
restaurant reviews, etc.

Careers suitable for individuals having high Linguistic-Verbal Intelligence:

Writers
Journalist
Content Developer
Public Speakers
Politicians
Lawyers
Teacher

Famous People Who Have High Linguistic-Verbal Intelligence:

 William Shakespeare
 Robert Frost
 Tony Robbins
 Barack Obama
 J.K. Rowling

Logical-Mathematical Intelligence

Logical-Mathematical intelligence involves a strong ability to analyse problems and issues logically,
excel at mathematical operations, and carry out scientific investigations. This can include the ability
to use formal and informal reasoning skills such as deductive reasoning and to detect patterns.

Strengths: Analysing Problems and Mathematical Operations

Characteristics of Logical-Mathematical Intelligence

Math smart children are good at reasoning, recognizing patterns and logically analyse problems e.g.

- Tend to think conceptually about numbers, relationships and patterns

- Excellent problem-solving skills
- Enjoys thinking about abstract ideas
- Likes to work math problems
- Excels at strategy games
- Looks for rational explanations
- Likes conducting scientific experiments
- Likes to categorize Listing or organizing facts
- Using deductive reasoning skills
- Using abstract symbols and formulas

Ways to Enhance Logical-Mathematical Intelligence

Following are ways that teachers and individuals can enhance and strengthen their current logical -
mathematical intelligence:

 Organize a collection
 Figure out different ways to answer a math problem
 Work out logic puzzles
 Buy a book on lateral thinking puzzles
 Analyse data
 Decipher codes
 Come up with a hypothesis and then prove it (Note: This does not have to be a "science
experiment" type of hypothesis).

Careers suitable for individuals having high Logical-Mathematical Intelligence

Scientists
Accountants
Computer Programmers
Mathematicians
Inventors
Engineer

Famous People Who Have High Logical-Mathematical Intelligence

 Thomas Edison
 Albert Einstein
 Bill Gates
 Warren Buffet
 Stephen Hawking

Visual-Spatial Intelligence

Visual-Spatial intelligence involves how well an individual processes visual information. This includes
the ability to visualize objects and rotate, transform, and otherwise manipulate them. It is a
foundational intelligence upon which many of the other intelligences rely and interact.

Strengths: Visual and Spatial Judgment

Characteristics of Visual-Spatial Intelligence

Art Smart children are good at visualizing things e.g.

- Good with Creating charts, posters, graphs, or diagrams, maps, charts and pictures
- Thinks in three-dimensions
- Excels at manipulating objects in his or her mind
- Likes to make hypotheses
- Create a web page or power point project
- Making a photo album, collage
- Good at putting puzzles together
 - Good at interpreting pictures, graphs and charts
- Enjoys drawing, painting and the visual arts
- Recognizes patterns easily

Ways to Enhance Spatial Intelligence

Following are ways that teachers and individuals can enhance and strengthen their current spatial
intelligence:

 Practicing visualization techniques

 Include artwork, photography, or drawing in classes when possible
 Give homework assignments in the form of puzzles
 Making a video or film
 Have students provide step-by-step instructions or directions
 Have students pretend to be an individual and write about their experiences
 Use mind maps to teach and review concepts
 Use maps and visual aids where possible

Careers suitable for individuals having high Visual-Spatial Intelligence

Physicists
Architects
Engineers
Builders
Artists
Computer Science

Famous People Who Have High Visual-Spatial Intelligence

 Neils Bohr
 I. M. Pei
 Buckminster Fuller
 Salvador Dali
 Galileo Galilei

Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence

Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence involves how well an individual controls their body in terms of
physical activity and/or fine motor skills. Individuals who excel in this intelligence typically learn best
by doing something as opposed to just reading about it. The most evident examples are people in
athletics or the performing arts, particularly when dancing or acting.

Strengths: Physical Movement, Motor Control

Characteristics of Kinesthetic Intelligence

Body smart children are said to be good at body movement, performing actions and physical control
e.g.
 - Has excellent hand-eye coordination and dexterity
- Good at dance, movement sequence and sports
- Enjoy creating things with their hands
- Excellent physical coordination
- Tends to remember by doing, rather than hearing or seeing
- Learn best by doing rather than reading or listening
- Have the ability to manipulate objects, using fine and gross motor skills
- Tend to use the entire body to express themselves
- Are generally good at physical activities
- Likes to build things

Ways to Enhance Kinesthetic Intelligence

Following are ways that teachers and individuals can enhance and strengthen their current
kinaesthetic intelligence:

 Include role-play activities

 Utilize manipulatives
 Teach to performing martial arts
 Use physical gestures to communicate an idea
 Have students create models if appropriate
 Create a dance class

Careers suitable for individuals having high Kinesthetic Intelligence

Athletes
Dancers
Builder
Gymnasts
Surgeons
Sculptors

Famous People Who Have High Kinesthetic Intelligence

 Michael Jordan
 Michael Jackson
 Tiger Woods
 Wayne Gretzky
 Mary Lou Retton

Musical Intelligence

Musical intelligence involves how skilful an individual is performing, composing, and appreciating
music and musical patterns. Individuals who excel in this intelligence typically are able to use
rhythms and patterns to assist in learning.

Strengths: Rhythm and Music

Characteristics of Musical Intelligence

Music smart children are good and thinking in patterns, rhythms and sounds e.g.

- Have a strong appreciation for music

- Good at musical composition and performance
- Enjoy singing and playing musical instruments
- Recognizes musical patterns and tones easily
- Good at remembering songs and melodies
- Rich understanding of musical structure, rhythm and notes
- Learn and study better using rhythm or music in the background
- Enjoy listening to and/or creating music
- Can become emotionally moved by music
- Enjoys rhythmic poetry.

Ways to Enhance Musical Intelligence

Following are ways that teachers and individuals can enhance and strengthen their current musical
intelligence:

 Include music in lessons where appropriate

 Identifying music that helps students to study
 Use musical vocabulary as metaphors
 Explain tonal patterns

Careers suitable for individuals having high Musical Intelligence

Composers
Musicians
Band Directors
Conductors
Disc Jockeys
Sound Board Operators
Music Critics
Singer
Music Teacher

Famous People Who Have High Musical Intelligence

 Beethoven
 Michael Jackson
 Eminem
 Itzhak Perlman
 Mozart
 Pt Ravi Shankar
 Lata Mangeskar
 Bismillah Khan
  Hariprasad Chaurasia

Interpersonal Intelligence

Interpersonal intelligence involves how skilful an individual is in understanding and dealing with
others. Individuals who excel in this intelligence typically are able to discern moods, feelings, and
motivations of others.

Strengths: Understanding and relating to other people

Characteristics of Interpersonal Intelligence

People Smart children are good understanding and interacting with other people.

- Skilled at assessing the emotions, motivations, desires and intentions of those around them
- Good at communicating verbally
- Sensing other's motives
- See situations from different perspectives
- Create positive relationships with others
- Good at resolving conflict in groups
- Enjoys socializing
- Likes to work in groups
- Extraverted
- Enjoys teaching others
- Empathetic

Ways to Enhance Interpersonal Intelligence

Following are ways that teachers and individuals can enhance and strengthen their current
Interpersonal intelligence:

 Giving feedback to the teacher or to classmates

 Intuit other's feelings and other’s points of view
 Have students teach a unit
 Include social service activities if applicable
 Establish a division of Labour
 Teach collaborative skills

Careers suitable for individuals having high Interpersonal Intelligence:

Politicians
Teachers
Counsellors
Social Workers
Diplomats
Coaches
Psychologist
Philosopher
 Sales person

Famous People Who Have High Interpersonal Intelligence

 Mahatma Gandhi
 Subhash Chandra Bose
 Bill Clinton
 Dr Phil
 Oprah Winfrey

Intrapersonal intelligence

Intrapersonal intelligence involves how skilful an individual is in understanding themselves.

Individuals who excel in this intelligence typically are introspective and can use this knowledge to
solve personal problems.

Strengths: Introspection and Self-Reflection

Characteristics of Intrapersonal intelligence

Self-smart children are good at being aware of their emotional states, feelings and motivations e.g.

- Tends to enjoy self-reflection and analysis, including day-dreaming

- Explores relationships with others and assessing personal strength
- Good at analysing his/her strengths and weaknesses
- Enjoys analysing theories and ideas
- Excellent self-awareness
- Clearly understands the basis for their own motivations and feelings
- Introverted
- Spends time alone
- Likes to work independently
- Self-motivated
- Likes to write blogs and articles

Ways to Enhance Intrapersonal intelligence

Following are ways that teachers and individuals can enhance and strengthen their current
intrapersonal intelligence:

 Assign independent projects

 Have students write in a daily or weekly journal
 Teach focusing/concentration skills
 Have students write reflections on topics studied in class
 Use metacognition techniques
 Have students imagine themselves as an individual from the period being studied.

Careers suitable for people having high Intrapersonal intelligence

 Psychologists
Poets
Theorist
Scientist
Counsellors
Writers
Therapists
Philosopher

Famous people who have high intrapersonal intelligence

 Tulsi Das
 Prem Chand
 Anne Frank
 Walt Whitman
 Aristotle
 Albert Einstein
 Friedrich Nietzsche

Naturalist intelligence

Naturalist intelligence involves how sensitive an individual is towards nature and the world around
them. Individuals who excel in this intelligence typically are interested in growing plants and/or
taking care of animals as well as sensitivity to other features of the natural world (clouds, rock
configurations, etc.)

Strengths: Finding patters and relationships to nature

Characteristics of Naturalist intelligence

Nature Smart children are high in this type of intelligence are more in tune with nature and are often
interested in:

- Categorizing species of plants and animals

- Nurturing, exploring the environment and learning about other species
- Highly aware of even subtle changes to their environments
- Enjoy camping, hiking and exploring the outdoors
- Interested in conservation and recycling
- Enjoys gardening
- Like collecting objects from nature
- Interested in the weather
- Feel a connection with the earth

Ways to Enhance Naturalist intelligence

Following are ways that teachers and individuals can enhance and strengthen their current
Naturalist intelligence:
  Join an environmental/wildlife protection group
 Hold an outdoor classroom
 Include connections to the weather and nature
 Teach labelling collections of natural objects from a variety of sources
 Researching local/global environmental concerns
 Arrange celestial observations
 Initiate projects on the food chain, water cycle or environmental issues.

Careers suitable for individuals having high Naturalist intelligence

Biologist
Zookeepers
Veterinarians
Gardeners
Marine Biologists
Animal Trainers
Farmers
Conservationists

Famous people who have high naturalist intelligence

 Jagdish Chandra Bose

 Jack Hanna
 Steve Irwin
 Charles Darwin
 Linnaeus
 Gregor Mendel
 Jane Goodall

Existential Intelligence

Existential intelligence involves an individual's ability to use collective values and intuition to
understand others and the world around them. Individuals who excel in this intelligence typically are
able to see the big picture.

Strengths: sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about human existence.

Characteristics of Existential Intelligence

Wondering Smart children are able to see the big picture e.g.

- Interested in questions about life, death, and beyond

- The existence of ghosts or spirits
- Able to look beyond the senses to explain phenomena
- Use collective values and intuition to understand others and the world around them
- Have strong interest in society and those around them
 - Enjoy pondering: Why they are here on earth, what the world was like before they were
born, what life might be like on another planet, whether or not animals can understand each
other, etc.

Ways to Enhance Existential Intelligence

Following are ways that teachers and individuals can enhance and strengthen their current
existential intelligence:

 Make connections between what is being learned and the world outside the classroom.
 Provide students with overviews in order to support their desire to see the big picture.
 Let students look at a topic from different points of view.

Careers suitable for individuals having high Existential Intelligence

Philosophers
Theologians
Life Coaches
Cosmologists

Famous people who have high existential intelligence

 Socrates
 Buddha
 Jesus Christ
 Wayne Dyer
 St. Augustine

Dermatoglyphics and Learning Styles

In today’s changing world, not only have systems of education changed, but the methods in which
children learn have changed as well. Today’s child grows up in a world filled with electronics,
gadgets and multi-media entertainment. Television, computers and video games have all
contributed to changes in the ways a child’s brain takes in new information and assimilates it.
Children today have a shorter attention span than children of past generations. This is due to the
fast paced and ever changing landscape of media such as television.

Learning style is an individual's natural or habitual pattern of acquiring and processing information.
One of the most common and widely-used categorizations of the various types of learning styles is
Neil Fleming's VARK model. Children are identified by their following
preferences:

Visual Learners

Visual Learners learn best by seeing (pictures, movies, diagrams).

Graphic displays such as charts, diagrams, illustrations, hand-outs,
and videos are all helpful learning tools for visual learners. People who prefer this type of learning
would rather see information presented in a visual rather than in written form.

Aural Learners
Auditory learners learn best by hearing information (music, discussion,
lectures). They tend to get a great deal out of lectures and are good at
remembering things they are told.

Reading and Writing Learners

Reading and Writing Learners prefer to take in information displayed as words

(making lists, reading textbooks, taking notes). Learning materials that are primarily
text-based are strongly preferred by these learners.

Kinesthetic Learners

Tactile learners learn best by touching and doing (experiments,

movement, and hands-on activities). A Kinesthetic learner is fine in
expressing their thoughts and feelings using body language and prefers to
gain knowledge or learn through process and movement.

Provide a rich learning environment

"Why they are able to pay attention to a game but not in school? What expectancies have the games
set up that aren't being delivered in a school setting?"

The question becomes one of harnessing the learning abilities that children develop as a result of
their exposure to media and using them to enhance academic performance. Children today learn
more readily with the use of multi-media approaches to teaching. Computers in the classroom,
educational videos and even video games are all aspects of the modern learning environment that
parents can use to provide kids with a head start.

“Children struggle when they try to learn in ways that aren’t natural for them,” says Dr Mary Ann
Smialek, educator and author. Outdated learning materials and approaches that don’t match with
the patterns of learning of the children are going to result in difficulties and frustration. As a parent,
our best bet is to use dermatoglyphics report based methods and technology to our advantage in
the following ways:

 Seek out educational media choices that work with your kids preferences instead of against
them;
 Make use of educational videos that hold your child’s attention;
 Don’t force old-fashioned learning methods if they simply aren’t working for your child;
 Make television and computers learning tools instead of just entertainment devices;
 Make the most of the early years of your child;
 Develop the habit of reading and a love of learning in your child;
 Utilize the amount of time that your child spends at home more productively;
  Introduce your child to technology at an early age;
 Prepare your child for increasing competition
 And above all, raise a well-rounded, happy and successful individual

As we move forward into an ever more complex and technologically advanced world, we need to use
the tools suggested by dermatoglyphics report that allow our children to learn best.

Dermatoglyphics and early childhood education

Early childhood is defined as the period from birth to eight years old. A time of remarkable brain
growth, these years lay the foundation for subsequent learning and development.

Early Childhood education focuses on children learning through play, based on the research and
philosophy of Jean Piaget. This belief is centred on the "power of play". It has been thought that
children learn more efficiently and gain more knowledge through play-based activities such as
dramatic play, art, and social games.

Researchers and childhood educators both view the dermatoglyphics assessment as an integral part
of the early childhood education process.

Growth of a child

Much of the first two years of life are spent in the creation of a child's first "sense of self"; most
children are able to differentiate between themselves and others by their second year. Early care
must emphasize links to family, home culture, and home language by uniquely caring for each child.

Children reflect typical pattern of activities and achievements as they grow from two to five years in
their age. Parents should spend quality time with their children as much as possible during whom
they get fun and learning simultaneously according to research.

Understanding the sequence of growth will make it easier for parents what to expect from child at
what age, which will give large amount of satisfaction to parents regarding development of their
children.

Age of child >> 2 years 3 years 4 years 5 years

Physical Child starts Child can run Ability of one foot Child can now
development walking quite considerably skipping is dress up self
comfortably, even good and can be achieved by a without any help.
starts stepping able to ride child at this age. Muscles of a child
alone, can set tricycle. Sense of He can now use now provide a
himself buttoning and scissors ably to smoother action,
comfortably in unbuttoning is cut (though not which can even
chair; can achieve being achieved by with that make him capable
state of child at age of 3. perfection) and to skate. He lies
independent He can now wear can dress up to hold steering
toileting which is shoes and himself finely for of scooters and
a great relief for stockings on his day to day need. car trying to run
parents. Tries to own. Studies Studies reveal them.
dress up on his suggest that a that child of this
own and can also child may be able age can have
 kick the ball. to build a tower confidence to
Studies show that of 10 cubes at age catch the
at two years of of 3. overhead throw
age, a child can of a ball.
build a tower of
six cubes!
Social A child is at very Child achieve Child looks out Child chooses
development basic level of gender sense at for other special friends
social this age means children's with whom he
development at knowledge of self company and enjoys more at
this age which is been a girl or a achieves sense of this age according
but natural and boy. He is able to playing to researches. He
needs continuous take turn and cooperatively in enjoys
parental takes part in small small group. He is atmosphere of
guidance, though group activities now on track with school now in the
one can expect happily which society and process of social
response to doesn't require becomes development.
simpler any skill. Verbal talkative. Child
instructions at guidance is shows versatility
this age from responded at in his behaviour
child. Studies considerable according to Child
suggest that a amount by child Development
child starts at this age. studies.
playing with dolls
and can recognise
own name.
Emotional Child starts Child doesn't Studies warn that Child enjoys
development enjoying physical show resistance parents need to mother's
affection from to changes at this allow controlled association at this
age of two. His age and feels freedom to the age according to
responses to more secure. He child at this age studies. He
humour are quite possesses more as he achieves happily accepts
well but discipline sense of personal level of rules to follow
factor is totally identity. Instinct confidence about and self-criticism.
absent at this of adventure self and attempts Child becomes
age. A child tends starts developing to break all more home-
to be self–centred in child at this boundaries centric and
at this age and age. Becomes regarding achieves sense of
possesses no more obedient behaviour riding responsibility
acceptance and likes music at on self- delivering on it
power to change. this age. confidence. He quite positively.
Negative quite even puts himself
often, possessive in testing's quite
and frustrated at often and many
times, but senses times responds
of self-identity defiantly.
and personal
belongings start
developing at this
age.
Intellectual Child starts taking Child gains ability Imagination Child is capable of
development interest in books to tell short power is at high telling long tales
and can identify stories and level in the child no as part of
simple pictorial nursery rhymes now which tends intellectual
forms. Attention as a part of him to ask many development and
span of a child is intellectual more questions can count up to
very short at this development at regarding 10. He can
age. But he is now this age. He can surroundings, identify colours
able to speak synchronize existence, rules now and keeps
words, short and thoughts and and regulations, asking meanings
simple sentences words society, rituals of words mostly
and phrases. appropriately and etched mostly to parents. He
sees surrounding uses complete takes more
atmosphere to sentence now in interest in
understand it. talks. Process of surrounding
Imagination learning atmosphere, new
powers are being generalisation is places, stores etc.
developed in child started now in
and he is able to child. He always
answer the attempts drawing
questions now. simple objects
which is quite
recognisable for
him.

Benefits of Dermatoglyphics Report

Dermatoglyphics can produce significant gains in children's learning and development. Integrating
dermatoglyphics findings with early childhood education assists many children in avoiding poor
outcomes, such as dropping out of school. Although the benefits seem to cross all economic and
social lines, the most significant gains are almost always noted among children from families with
the lowest income levels and the least amount of formal education.

Use of dermatoglyphics report in early childhood education are equally effective in promoting the
learning and development of young children. Some additional characteristics of a dermatoglyphics
based early education program are as follows:

 Children have safe nurturing and stimulating environment.

 Parents plan a balanced learning schedule in which the children do not feel fatigued.
 Suggest ways for strong foundation in language development, early literacy and math.
 The program engages children in purposeful learning activities and play based on
dermatoglyphics.
 The advisor regularly communicates with parents so that they are active participants in their
children's education.

Encourage your child and reward effort

Research has shown that the way we praise our children has a great impact on their success.
Children who consistently receive praise for a strong effort, working hard and doing their best have
greater success later with challenging tasks. Children who are simply told they are smart later
struggle with difficult academic challenges.

According to Dr Carol Dweck of Columbia University, pioneer of research into the effects of praise,
“Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control. They come to see themselves as in
control of their success.”

It is very important for parents to stay engaged in their child's learning process even if they are
getting most of their education from a school. The knowledge learnt from a parent will be more
cherished and remembered by a child then if any other person taught them, especially at an early
age. Early childhood education is crucial to child development and should be entered into cautiously
with someone you trust will benefit your child. Often educators refer to parents as the child's "first
and best teacher".

Most parents share the goal of ensuring that their child is successful in life, both in academic and
social endeavours. The tips of dermatoglyphics will provide your child with the foundations of
success in all of their endeavours, allowing them to learn, grow and develop into successful people.
 Appendix - A

How to take finger prints

(A) Automated Fingerprint System

There are two main ways of scanning fingers. An optical scanner works
by shining a bright light over your fingerprint and taking what is
effectively a digital photograph. If you've ever photocopied your hand,
you'll know exactly how this works. Instead of producing a dirty black
photocopy, the image feeds into a computer scanner. The scanner uses
a light-sensitive chip called a CCD (charge-coupled device) to produce a
digital image. The computer analyses the image automatically, selecting
just the fingerprint, and then uses sophisticated pattern-matching
software to turn it into a code.

Another type of scanner, known as a capacitive scanner, measures your

finger electrically. When your finger rests on a surface, the ridges in your fingerprints touch the
surface while the hollows between the ridges stand slightly clear of it. In other words, there are
varying distances between each part of your finger and the surface below. A capacitive scanner
builds up a picture of your fingerprint by measuring these distances. Scanners like this are a bit like
the touchscreens on things like iPhones and iPads.

Scanned fingerprints are uploaded into a computer database, which transforms it into digital
minutiae. This is then used to analyse the characteristics of the person with the help of the software
to generate the dermatoglyphics report of the client.

(B) Manual Fingerprint Method

Step 1. >> Rub the side of a pencil on a piece of paper.

Step 2. >> Rub your finger on the patch where you rubbed with the pencil.

Step 3. >> Get a friend to get a piece of tape (preferably scotch clear tape).
Step 4. >> Put your finger on the tape

Step 5. Take the tape off gently.

Final Print
Biometric systems authenticate users by comparing the ridges and patterns on the finger.