News

The law on age discrimination in organisations came into effect on 1st October. It joins legislation on gender, ethnicity, disability, religious belief and sexual orientation and, like these, applies to how people are treated by a variety of organisations when they apply for a job or are in employment.This legislation highlights the issue of fair m…

The following article by David M. Herszenhorn appeared in the New York Times on the 4th May 2006, and also in the Sarasota Herald Tribune and the Amhurst Times on the 5th May."Sz-Shyan Wu is not a Cuban baseball star or a dissident musician. But in urging the United States government to grant him a work visa, the New York State Education Department…

On 1st November 2005 The Psychometrics Centre moved from City University, London to its new home at the University of Cambridge.Our move enables The Psychometrics Centre to:develop new postgraduate programmes in association with Cambridge University.strengthen our existing agenda to build a dialogue between human measurement experts in work and edu…

The official launch of the UK's first  pan Online Testing Centre, a partnership between pan testing and the Psychometrics Centre took place on 19th October 2004.Over 120 people attended the launch, which gave participants a chance to network with key authors, users, publishers and academics in an area that is impacting work, education and healthcar…

Professor John Rust was invited to lead a Masterclass aimed at experienced psychologists and HR practitioners for the British Psychological Society's Learning a Living Programme. It took place at the Royal Society. The day was stimulating and interactive; the audience comprised test publishers as well as well-versed end users. Here is a summary of …

Ian FloranceThe US hit television series 'The Apprentice' pitted a series of candidates against  flamboyant entrepreneur Donald Trump. They were given a series of tasks which weeded them out until a winner was offered a job in Trump's organisation. The UK adaptation of the series hasalso been a great success, with the 2nd series hitting our screens…

Almuth McDowall The term 'work/life balance' refers to how we meet the often conflicting demands of work and home. The best analogy is that of a juggler: some of us happily juggle many balls at any one time, others prefer to juggle fewer. Occasionally, all of us will drop some balls. Whether we are happy or unhappy about our particular situation is…

Earlier this month, Procter and Gamble announced the results of a safety and efficacy study of treatment with Intrinsa, a female testosterone patch. The study showed increased satisfying sexual activity and desire in patients with Hypoactive Desire Sexual Disorder (lack of sexual desire causing a woman personal distress) who previously had both ova…

The new 4th Edition of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF-4) and the 2nd Edition of CELF Preschool are to be standardised in the UK .The Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge is pleased to announce that it has won a new contract to adapt and re-standardise a major American language assessment for the UK.Clinical Ev…

Ian FloranceSince the 1960s business thinking has emphasised youth and what youth supposedly carries with it: vitality, energy, creativity. Remember the dot.com bust and you'll question whether youth knows what it's doing.Older workers are going to matter in the future but they're not as easy to recruit or manage as younger people.The Age Time Bomb…

Ian Florance"We have too many good ideas but never actually make them happen"There's a lot of talk about creativity in business at the moment. Large corporations hire poets and theatre-groups to break the mould. Teams are asked to 'think the unthinkable'.The dot.com boom and crash illustrated the dangers of unfettered creativity untempered by basic…

Some of the key issues in web-based assessment"Writing on parchment will last a thousand years, while printing on paper will only survive a couple of centuries"Abbot Johannes Trithemius, 1492Spend on on-line recruitment advertising has just passed spend on its print equivalent. Organisations are realising that training on-line saves money in travel…

Professor John Rust, Director of The Psychometrics Centre, delivered his lecture  "People Who Need People: Does Psychometrics Have A Place in Staff Selection?" on 26th February 2004 in the Oliver Thomson Lecture Theatre at City University .The University holds six Insight Lectures each year, featuring key academics talking about focal issues in res…

Commercial indexes of influence such as Peer Index, Klout, KRED are surging in popularity as big data and algorithms are put to work providing predictive analysis and business insight. At the intersection of the worlds of psychology and marketing, a new discipline is emerging that analyses behaviour and provides actionable insight for forward-looki…

The Concerto Team recently visited Beijing to give a presentation at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications focused on the history of psychometrics and future developments in the age of big data. It was attended by more than 200 staff and students from local universities. After the talk, a three day workshop on Computer Adaptive Tes…