Future of Psychometric Tools and Techniques

In 2017, Robert McHenry, founder of OPP, had a chapter on ‘The Future of Psychometric Testing’ published in a book
called Psychometric Testing: Critical Perspectives. In this text, he makes a lot of key predictions about where the field of
psychometrics is going.

Prediction #1: Smartphones will replace computers for employee assessment

This is really already happening in the market. If you look at the majority of psychometric companies out there now,
you’ll see more and more in their branding, their marketing, that they’re really emphasising the fact that their
questionnaires are mobile friendly.

Prediction #2: High-quality psychometric testing services will be sold direct to consumers
This is sort of happening in the market – we can see on Facebook and other social media sites that we’re invited and
enrolled to engage in other things and buy things directly.

Prediction #3: Advances in neuroscience of personality will reveal which are the most valid individual differences
to measure and how best to measure them
One of the other big predictions is the impact that neuroscience will have on psychometric testing, or basically a new
way to look at people’s personalities. Interestingly, it’s actually already happening – there’s some research where
they’ve actually mapped the Big Five onto some different functions of the brain. So, for example, conscientiousness is
linked to activity in the prefrontal cortex. I
In 2017, Robert McHenry, founder of OPP, had a chapter on ‘The Future of Psychometric Testing’ published in a book
called Psychometric Testing: Critical Perspectives. In this text, he makes a lot of key predictions about where the field of
psychometrics is going.

Prediction #4: The digital movement, coupled with the use of big data and new forms of digital CV will render
many of the current applications for high-stakes psychometric testing redundant
The passive collection of data to measure your personality. So, this could be through your tweets or your likes on
Facebook. This is a pretty big movement – you probably will have heard of it through things like Cambridge Analytica
and the Facebook scandal that has emerged, which is really changing how we actually view the benefits of this – it’s
kind of opened up a bit of a can of worms.

The way it’s gone with GDPR, Cambridge Analytica, data privacy, it’s unlikely to be okay that you turn up at a job
interview and they’ve analysed all your social media and that’s the basis of it. There’s an interesting divide here,
between mathematicians and AI people, and psychologists. In fact, there’s a bit of a war going on between them. And
the war goes a bit like this: the AI people, the mathematicians, they love black boxes, they’re going to look at your
social media, gather all your data, and figure it all out. But it’s a black box and they don’t often know what’s going on.
And the psychologists are striving for a transparent box where we know what’s going on so it’s fair, so there’s no
adverse impact, and it’s all done ethically and so on.
In 2017, Robert McHenry, founder of OPP, had a chapter on ‘The Future of Psychometric Testing’ published in a book
called Psychometric Testing: Critical Perspectives. In this text, he makes a lot of key predictions about where the field of
psychometrics is going.

Prediction #5: The basis for employee development will be derived from the data yielded by wearable devices
and not from psychometric tests
This prediction is about moving away from taking a psychometric test, instead maybe putting on a heart monitor or
smartphone app, and that will basically be how we do development and coaching in the future.

It’s sort of already happening. There’s a study where someone was designing a set of offices and they tagged everybody
and gathered data on their movements, their heartbeat and so on. And from that they found out that certain designs were
bad for collaboration, created anxiety, and other ones were better. So, this is definitely happening.
What are some future predictions you can think of?