Why are Psychological Tests Important?
We all know the importance of education in our lives. The higher the education we pursue, the higher it will lead us in our career. There are various options available in the educational field, we have many options like we can opt science or commerce or engineering or humanity, etc. All these fields require different levels of hard work to pass them. The harder you study the more the chances are of getting success, but to study hard you need strong memory and capability.
Different students have different memory capacities and learning power. Therefore, before selecting any field a student or candidate must analyze his or her capabilities. This analysis will give an idea about the chances of clearing the selected course or field.
But the question is how a student or candidate can analyze the brain, memory, and learning power?
The answer to this question is, a candidate can go through psychological tests to know about his mental abilities (mental abilities mean learning and retaining power). Psychometric tests are one of such psychological tests that can help a student or candidate to know his or her mental abilities.
Before selecting any field going through these types of tests are important because if you get high scores in this test you can opt for a difficult course like MBBS or chartered accountancy course.
However, passing these tests does not give any surety that you will surely pass the selected course, it does only give an idea of your mental abilities.
There are different types of psychological tests to ascertain our different mental abilities. The following are the different types of tests that help us in ascertaining our different mental abilities:
Achievement Tests
An achievement test is a kind of knowledge test. It helps us in assessing the knowledge of a person, the things a person has learned in his school or any other educational place.
It helps in assessing the knowledge of a person in a given area like what is the forte of such person mathematics, science, technology, accountancy, etc.
To what extent a person has the knowledge and information of a particular field. The achievement test will not only help in knowing the expertise field of a person but also will help in deciding the further study field (in case of a student).
If a person is an expert in a particular field, what is his or her expertise level among other people in such a particular field?
Aptitude Test
Aptitude test whereas an achievement test helps us in knowing the knowledge of a person in a particular field, on the other hand, the aptitude test helps in knowing the learning capacity of a person.
In simple words, the aptitude test can help us in assessing how faster a person can learn a new skill or topic or knowledge.
What is the level of the ability of a person to acquire a new skill or knowledge? The learning ability of a person to something new also depends on the interest of such person in that new topic or skill.
For example, a person is good in mathematics, he would be interested in to know more about mathematics, he would like to learn new techniques and methods of doing it.
The aptitude test is further divided into three categories. First is a general aptitude test, second is a quantitative aptitude test, and the third is a verbal & non-verbal aptitude test.
a. General aptitude test: this test is conducted to assess the observation ability of a person. How faster a person can observe the matter or situation or condition or problem? Observation ability includes verbal, quantitative, and logical reasoning techniques. A person having good observation ability can make more judgments, it helps in solving quantitative and logical reasoning problems.
b. Verbal and non-verbal aptitude test: through a verbal test the ability of a person to use words, grammar, and make use of thoughts to conclude the decisions can be assessed. Whereas a non-verbal test assesses the ability of a person to solve puzzles and patterns, it is believed that the more the person good at solving puzzles the quicker he will be at decision making. Higher the level of a test means higher the complexity of the test.
c. Quantitative test: a quantitative test is taken to assess the ability of a person to solve the mathematical problems.
Attitude Test
An attitude test is taken to know a person’s behaviour toward things, situations, persons, conditions, etc. How does a person perceive different things depict his attitude? Many tests can be taken to know the attitude of a person.
All the tests mentioned are the types of psychometric tests. As already mentioned above these tests are taken to assess the mental ability of a student or candidate.
However, these tests can also be used while recruiting employees for a company. An employer can make use of these tests to assess the intelligence, skills, and personality of a person. Scores made by an applicant shall determine whether he or she shall be recruited for the job or not.
An employer can also assess the capability of a person to work with others, whether he or she shall be able to co-ordinate with others or not.
You can prepare for these kinds of tests, you can prepare online as well as offline for it. In an offline way, you can join an institute providing classes for psychometric tests, whereas in online classes you will be either taught during live virtual classes or provided with videos of different lectures. Preparing online can save your traveling time and these are cheaper in prices than offline classes.
If you already know the types of questions you will be asked during a psychometric test, it can help you in better preparation for such a test.
Start reading English newspapers to improve your vocabulary and grammar, start solving mathematical problems to improve the quantitative section, start solving puzzles to increase your mental alertness. All these things shall be very helpful in preparing for such types of tests.
