How was our personality test developed?

General Overview

  • 72 Likert-scale questions.
  • Grounded in the HEXACO model with six main personality factors: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience.
  • Each factor has four more narrow facets for a more nuanced understanding.


Test Format

The personality test is designed to assess candidates’ individual traits within the work context. It consists of 72 statements (3 per facet) where candidates rate the extent to which they agree with each behavior from ‘Strongly disagree’ to ‘Strongly agree’. There is no set time limit but candidates usually take between 5-10 minutes to complete the test.


Test Development

The test was developed by our team of organizational psychologists and psychometricians, strictly adhering to industry best practices to maximize reliability, validity, and fairness. A draft version of the test was piloted with a sample of representative job candidates from diverse backgrounds, after which the collected data was rigorously analyzed to establish group norms that aid in interpreting scores. Our test has been very carefully crafted to ensure that candidates feel comfortable responding honestly about their personality in the context of work. 

Our personality model is based on Kibeom Lee and Michael Ashton’s work developing the HEXACO framework. Content and construct validity are analyzed by comparing the dimensionality and performance of our test against research conducted about this particular theory of personality. As the database of responses grows, the test is periodically analyzed to ensure that each test-taker has a fair chance of demonstrating their individual characteristics. 


Scoring

Candidate results are provided through our platform, represented by a percentile that indicates where a candidate falls on that characteristic in relation to a comparable sample of test-takers. This provides an objective benchmark for candidate comparison across the talent pool. The results include a score-specific description of how that individual may behave on the job along with a recommended interview question if you wish to dig deeper into that area during a follow-up interview. 


Implementation Guidance

Personality testing is relevant for most job roles. Certain traits (e.g. Conscientiousness) are considered reliable predictors of job performance across jobs and industries. We highly recommend that personnel selection decisions should be made in accordance with the whole-person approach to assessment, using comparative data from multiple tests. On our platform, the personality test is most often used in combination with aptitude and soft skills tests.


Key Pilot Statistics

  • Data was collected from 264 potential job seekers.
  • Sample demographics were as follows:
    • Average age was 33.7 years;
    • Genders included male (50.2%), female (47.7%) and other (1.3%);
    • Ethnicities included Asian (34.9%), White (31%), Black or African American (22.5%), Other Ethnicity (6.8%) and Mixed or Multiple Ethnicities (4.8%);
    • Countries included India (17.9%), Great Britain (10.9%), Nigeria (8.5%), United States (6.2%), Australia (4.6%), Canada (4.6%) and 18 others.
  • Cronbach’s α for each factor ranged from α = 0.40 to α = 0.79, which is considered moderate reliability given the brevity of the test scales.

*Most recent data on the test’s performance is available through the Neuroworx platform which is updated regularly.