Article
One: Psychometric Product Review: 15FQ+
Company Name: Psytech International Limited
Product Name: 15FQ+
Website Address: http://www.15FQ.com
Description (provided by Psytech):
"Multi-trait factorial personality questionnaire based on the Cattell 16PF model and fully implements the Big Five."
The “big five” is based on the concept that there are five underlying broad based personality factors that are Extroversion, Neuroticism, Openness (to ideas), Agreeableness and Conformity.
Cost: No set-up or licence fee. For the full report the cost is £18 to produce online (it’s free to setup the account).
Do you have to be qualified to interpret the questionnaires:
Assessors must be British Psychological Society Level B trained.
Candidate Experience (guinea pig candidate was Elaine):
The test took about 30 minutes to complete. The instructions you are given are very clear and the whole questionnaire was very straightforward. There were 200 questions and each one has 3 possible answers (true, false & and neither) and you have to select the most relevant answer. The wording and format of the questions made it easy to select an answer based on first instinct. (i.e. didn't have to think about what the question was asking). The relevance of the questions was clear and there was a fair amount of repetition in questions (worded slightly differently).
I thought the feedback given was very detailed and thorough and for the most part was accurate. I felt there was a transparency about the process as I could see how, given the questions asked, the report had been generated.
Overview of Feedback Report: The bulk of the feedback report (11 pages) is narrative. It starts by talking about validity (i.e. how honest the candidate has been in completing the report) and then looks at 3 main “clumps” of personality styles: interpersonal, thinking and coping. This narrative is built up from the 21 different personality scales (eg, trusting/suspicious, accommodating/dominant) measured by the questionnaire. For each personality scale the candidate is given a “score”. For example on the sober serious/enthusiastic scale Elaine “scored” 10; stating that she is someone who sees herself as very strongly enthusiastic versus “sober serious”. The profile also looks at Team Style. This shows all 8 potential team types (shaper-driver, implementer, etc) and giving a rating score for each. There is also a narrative describing the candidate’s team role combination. Leadership Styles is a similar section (5 styles) where the primary and secondary leadership styles are explored. The same format is used for Subordinate style (5 styles) and Influencing style (10 styles). The final section of the report looks at “Career Theme Scales”. This provides a match between the candidate’s profile and six broad occupational groups. For each of the occupational group a score is given (eg, Artistic: 4, Social: 9). The theme of each group is then described. As these six categories are very broad I would use this section to back up a job application or sound a warning bell if the profile seems very far off the candidate’s chosen career.
Summary
I didn’t feel there was anything wrong with this report and it is certainly low cost. I would consider using the report for junior hires but would not feel confident using this to help a client identify areas to probe in interview with a very senior candidate. I acknowledge that having not been through training from Psytech I am not experienced enough to use the questionnaire to the full however, my opinion based on the experience I have is that considering the number of questions Elaine had to answer there just wasn’t quite enough depth for me.
Contact Details: Ginny Brown is the contact at Psytech. She can be contacted on 01525 720003 or by email at
g.grown@psytech.com
|