That which is soft requires hard measurements. That’s why, when measuring human characteristics, it’s necessary to be as rigorous as possible in order to obtain a reliable result. Thus, the vast majority of pop-psychology tests are just fun, not psychology.
For a psychological test to be credible, it must be valid, reliable, standardized, normalized, and adapted. Valid, i.e. it must measure what it’s supposed to measure (here, convergence with other tests is examined). Reliability means that the measurement must be constant over time, i.e. if you complete the questionnaire this year, you should complete it very similarly next year. Standardization is a standardized way of using the test, which means standardizing the environmental conditions. Normalization is the knowledge of the population that is needed to know what the results mean. Adaptation, on the other hand, is usually the transfer of a test from one population to another, e.g. from one country to another.
When dealing with business solutions, it’s worth paying attention to whether a given test is a test accepted by science – whether it has all the required properties. Making decisions about a person in a company on the basis of a test that does not inspire confidence can not only lead to the organization being harmed, but the individual too.
