News

A study carried out by Arielle Bonneville-Roussy and Dr Jason Rentfrow in The Psychometrics Centre examined the question of how our engagement with music changes over the decades. Data from two large cross-sectional studies involving more than a quarter of a million individuals from the outofservice.com database were used to investigate age differe…

In Cambridge on Thursday 5th September 2013, Professor James Flynn reminded a packed lecture theatre that mass intelligence has been dramatically increasing since the 1930s. The societal influences to which he attributes this phenomenon, which has come to be known as ‘the Flynn effect’, include better and broader education, urban living, widespread…

Advertising strategy via social networks has been undergoing a seismic shift since the introduction of site and page endorsement through Facebook likes and Twitter follows. TBG Digital, one of the world's largest companies specialising in Facebook marketing, together with The Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge, examined 200 billion…

The 2011 Best Doctoral Dissertations Prize from the Psychometric Society was awarded to Dr Anna Brown of The University of Cambridge Psychometrics Centre. The thesis, entitled “How Item Response Theory can solve problems of ipsative data”, was carried out at the University of Barcelona under the supervision of Professor Alberto Maydeu-Olivares. The…

Integrity testing recognises that employers have a particular interest in how a candidate or employee is likely to behave on the job, rather than in more theoretical or abstract aspects of psychological theory. However, integrity is difficult to measure directly. Every interviewer knows the difficulty of getting straight answers from candidates abo…

The Psychometrics Centre used the occasion of the 17th International Conference of The Psychometrics Society in Hong Kong (July 2011) to launch Concerto, its new open-source online adaptive testing platform. Concerto brings high quality inexpensive adaptability to the world of online testing - for both research and business.What is adaptive testing…

LikeAudience.com, a breakthrough research and marketing tool developed at The Psychometrics Centre, provides detailed psycho-demographic profiles of brands, products, ideas, and all the other things people like on Facebook. It is designed to help researchers and marketers to assess the personality (BIG5), IQ, satisfaction with life, relationship st…

A major Psychometrics Centre eventAn audience at Trinity College, Cambridge had the opportunity to listen to and question one of the leading participants in intelligence studies; James Flynn, the discoverer of the 'Flynn Effect'Has intelligence been rising?Recent debates on standards in education and about skills shortages in industry have highligh…

The Psychometric Society held its 17th International Meeting in Hong Kong at the Hong Kong Institute of Education from the 19th to the 22nd of July 2011. For full details of the programme and venue see theIMPS 2011 Conference website.We were particularly delighted that the judges of the Psychometrics Society Dissertation Award unanimously agreed on…

Ian Florance considers some of the lessons to be learned from recent views on testing.Psychometrics is going through its most exciting period of development in the almost 30 years I've worked in the area. Usage is increasing in theUK in areas ranging from the treatment of mild mental disorder to organisational selection. Growing use in China, India…

It’s good news that psychology is becoming such a popular subject in schools. To support this encouraging trend, we’re posting an essay by Ketan Ahuja, a pupil at St. Paul's School, London, which wins the University of Cambridge Psychometrics Centre’s prize as the best school essay on a psychometric topic. We were impressed that, rather than focusi…

The Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge will be hosting  IMPS 2009, the 16th International Meeting and the 74th Annual Meeting of the Psychometric Society in St John’s College, Cambridge from the 20th to the 24th July 2009.Click here for the IMPS 2009 website.The Psychometric Society was founded in 1935. It is an international non-p…

Professor James Flynn, Distinguished Associate of the Psychometrics Centre, was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society of New Zealand on 7th November 2007. Fellowship of the Royal Society of New Zealand (FRSNZ) is an honour conferred for distinction in research or the advancement of science or technology. The Society commented on its web site…

Every UK school, most UK hospitals and around 70% of UK companies with over 50 employees use psychometric tests. Yet 'psychometrics' still sounds like a black art and 'testing' gives people flashbacks to sweating over exam papers. Let's clear away some of the mystery and misunderstanding, using business to illustrate what psychometrics is all about…

Ian FloranceWhen I was 12 I bought a copy of a paperback called 'TEST YOUR OWN IQ'. The answers to the questions were included at the back of the book. It seemed to me the most intelligent thing to do would be to look up the answers. I turned out to be a genius. Later events have shown the weakness of this 'cheating' strategy; I've been something o…