Narrative Report

The Test Taking Approach paragraph is where the results of the validity scales are presented. As noted earlier, this is where to check to make sure that the profile is valid. This section indicates whether or not the candidate was open and honest in his or her self-descriptions or if the profile may be inaccurate due to candidate faking or other problems. See the section above on validity for more information.

More accurate profiles may be indicated by the following phrases:

• “…read the items carefully”
• “…responded consistently”
• “…responded in an open manner”

Profiles that may not be as accurate may be indicated by the following phrases:

• “…responded in an inconsistent manner”
• “…may have been overly defended”
• “…may not have understood the meanings of some of the words”

While it is normal for most job candidates to be somewhat overly positive, if the candidate was unrealistically positive, the paragraph will make a statement indicating that the results may not be reliable or valid. If there are questions regarding the accuracy of the profile, look for confirming or conflicting information in other parts of the selection process.

For the next four paragraphs (problem solving, emotional, social and work factors), the narratives are built from the personality profile and predictive scales mentioned earlier. The algorithm basically asks itself “What would a psychologist say about a person with this profile?” To answer the question, it accesses a database composed of the information from several thousand actual psychological assessment reports on business people in a wide range of organizations and functional areas. The individual paragraphs are created sentence by sentence in order of probability of occurrence. There is no check for contradiction or inconsistency, so some of these paragraphs may offer conflicting descriptions. The idea here is to cast a wide net, rather than to come up with a definitive personality description.

The Problem Solving paragraph describes the person’s most likely approach to dealing with problem analysis and decision-making. In the example, the first two sentences in this paragraph allude to deductive reasoning skills and verbal aptitude. You will only see these first two sentences in cases where the deductive reasoning and general vocabulary assessments were administered. The cognitive measures are often omitted when the testing session is not proctored. In such cases, there will be no estimations of aptitude or ability, only descriptions of likely styles and approaches in handling data, analyses and general problem-solving opportunities.

The Emotional Factors paragraph usually includes comments related to motivation, stress proneness, intensity and overall adjustment. This paragraph describes the person’s typical internal environment.

Social Style is more descriptive of external behavior that people will be likely to see. It includes observations on such factors as introversion/extraversion, sensitivity, assertiveness and cooperativeness.

The Work Factors section describes the candidate’s most likely behavior on the job. Statements in this paragraph will typically include observations about discipline, communications, similarity to people in various work functions and sense of urgency.

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