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The Psychometrics Centre

Cambridge Judge Business School
 

The Psychometrics Centre were commissioned by Hogrefe (UK) Ltd to anglicise and standardise one of the world's leading personality tests, the NEO PI-R, for use in the UK. This test is the world's most widely used measure of the big-five personality factors. UK organisations have increasingly adopted the NEO PI-R due to its ease of use and superb technical characteristics. However, some of the NEO PI-R items were rather 'American' and there had been a pressing need for UK norms. Several companies and organisations, both public and private sector, assisted us with this important project

Translation and UK standardisation of the Business-focused Inventory of Personality (BIP).

The BIP is a very popular work-based personality test in Europe and Switzerland, and combines an assessment of both work style and motivation. It was originally developed in Germany following over 10 years of research into personality at work with input from HR professionals.  The result is a practical, work-based questionnaire that is valuable for use at senior managerial levels. The BIP includes fourteen scales arranged into four conceptual domains:

Occupational Orientation assesses work-specific motivation, particularly that which motivates respondents in planning and shaping their career path and what they value in a job. The three scales are:

  • Achievement Motivation - Willingness to tackle problems and the motivation to make strong demands on one’s own performance; readiness to invest strenuous effort; being motivated to continuously improve one’s own performance.
  • Power Motivation - Motivation to change something that is seen as needing improvement; readiness to influence things and to follow up with one’s own ideas.
  • Leadership Motivation - Motivation to exert influence in a social situation; showing a preference for leadership and management tasks.

Occupational Behaviour assesses the typical approach to work and focuses on three specific aspects:

  • Conscientiousness - Carefulness of work habits; trustworthiness; attention to detail; preference for a structured, systematic and well thought out approach; proneness to perfectionism.
  • Flexibility - Readiness to take on new or unexpected situations and to tolerate uncertainty; openness to new perspectives and methods; acceptance of change.
  • Action Orientation - Willingness to transform a decision into a goal-oriented activity; readiness to protect a chosen course of action from diversionary proposals.

Social Competencies assesses the style of interacting with other people and contains five scales:

  • Social Sensitivity - The capacity to pick up subtle signals in social situations; the capacity for empathy; demonstrating confidence in one’s own interpretation of the behaviour of others.
  • Openness to Contact - A readiness and preference for initiating contact with people; the active building and maintenance of both work-related and private relationships and networks.
  • Sociability - Preference for the type of social relations that are characterised by friendliness and respect; generosity towards those who are less sociable; a wish for harmony with others.
  • Team Orientation - Placing a value on teamwork and co-operation; a readiness to actively support team processes; a willingness to sacrifice one’s own interests for the benefit of the work group.
  • Assertiveness - Showing a tendency to dominate in social situations; persistence in striving to achieve goals even against resistance; sensitivity to interference.

Psychological Constitution seeks to describe how the demands made by a range of tasks at work, impact on a person's resilience and experience of emotional pressure. The three scales of this domain are:

  • Emotional Stability - The degree to which emotional reactions are balanced and not volatile; the capacity to recover from defeat and failure; the capacity to control one’s own emotional reactions.
  • Working under Pressure - Having confidence in one’s ability to be highly resilient and robust; the readiness to take on heavy work loads.
  • Self-Confidence - Emotional independence from the judgment of others; self-motivation; having confidence in one’s own capacity and expected performance.

Impression Management -- a social desirability or 'lie' scale that assesses the honesty and directness of the respondant's approach to the questionnaire, and enables the user to assess the extent to which respondents may have over-exaggerated the natural tendency to present themselves in the best possible light.

The NEO PI-R and the BIP are available fro Hogrefe-UK Ltd.

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