Psychometric Testing – What Is It, What Does It Involve & What Are The Pros And Cons?

When a person is injured and lodges a claim for compensation, they are generally required to undergo an examination organised by the defendant.

If you have sustained a psychological injury, be it anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or another injury, and have lodged a claim for the same, the defendant will usually organise for you to attend an examination with a psychiatrist.

The purpose of these examinations is to obtain evidence on your injury, so they will likely cover topics including what caused your injury, what capacity/fitness you have for work, opinions on treatment and/or what permanent impairment you may suffer from as a result of your injury.

This type of examination will usually last for between 30 minutes to an hour.

However, it is becoming increasingly common for defendants to arrange assessments which also involve an element of psychometric testing.

What is ‘Psychometric Testing’ and what does it involve?

Psychometric testing is a type of assessment used to objectively measure an individual’s cognitive abilities, their personality traits and behavioural style.

This type of testing uses standardised questions and multiple choice or rating scale answers (think: ‘rank how you identify with the following statement from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”’), in attempts to remove bias from the assessment.

Results are then measured and interpreted against ‘benchmark’ answers.

There are various categories of psychometric tests, some of which include;

1. Cognitive tests: used to measure intellectual ability, functioning and memory.
2. Personality assessments: used to measure habitual ways of thinking, feeling and behaving.
3. Symptom questionnaires: used to measure symptom severity.
4. Neuropsychological tests: used to measure brain function.

What are the pros and cons of psychometric testing?

Psychometric testing can be used in clinical practice to help guide practitioners in diagnosing disorders, creating treatment plans and monitoring and evaluating an individual’s symptoms.

By using standardised tests, psychometric testing reduces subjective biases in the clinical evaluation of an individual.

However, this does not eliminate bias and can often represent an over-simplification of a participant’s circumstances.

It is important that when interpreting psychometric test results, that the relevant practitioner also consider cultural biases and any potential language limitations, and whether these skew results – as benchmark answers are often developed based on one group of people and therefore won’t take into account the participant’s individual circumstances.

For people suffering from debilitating psychological injuries, this type of testing can also be an incredibly arduous and invasive process. The duration that psychometric testing will take will largely depend on the type of testing set to occur and can last for hours or even split over multiple sessions over different days.

Defendants in personal injury claims will often use psychometric testing for a specific purpose; to ‘test’ a claimant’s credibility, by using psychometric tests to assess whether symptoms are exaggerated or fictitious. To read more about this, visit Psychometric Testing in Litigation.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.