Pre-M presented at International Test Comission Conference

This year marked Renful’s first participation at the International Test Commission conference in Amsterdam.

The conference featured a number of interesting presentations from top psychologists on Modern Advances in Assessment including Testing and Digital Technology and recent Developments in Theory of Testing.

Our resident Psychologist, Yehuda Esformes, provided a very well received lecture about his work on Pre-M; Renful’s Pre-employment testing software for security screeners.

The presentation provided a demonstration and explanation of the simulation tests available on Pre-M and the advantages over conventional testing it provides to managers when recruiting security personnel.

Here’s the abstract from Yehuda’s lecture:

Simulation tests for Aviation Security Staff: Incremental validity over conventional psychometric tests.

Simulation tests, like other similar assessment methods, are deemed to have a higher face validity and greater fairness than conventional tests. They are also considered to be more reliable and more valid. Given the continuing threat to civil aviation, and with the aim of improving the selection of aviation security personnel, we developed a computer based test battery tailored specifically for selecting X=ray baggage screeners (BAT-XR).

The battery includes both conventional visual perception tests  (colour perception, mental rotation, visual closure and sustained focused attention), and simulation tests (basic image interpretation, object recognition-superimposition, attention to anomalies).

All tests were designed on the basis of job task analysis. The objective of our study was to determine whether the simulation tests offer additional advantages over conventional tests in terms of incremental validity.

The BAT-XR and a set of four cognitive tests commonly used in Israel for primary selection were administered to 206 candidates for the position of X-ray baggage screener. The criterion was the participant’s ability to quickly detect threat articles in X-ray images of bags.

A series of hierarchical regression analyses revealed that after controlling for age and gender, the simulation tests were significantly more powerful predictors than conventional tests.

And finally…

Our minds thoroughly prodded and probed by a number of the world’s top psychologists, we’ll need to rest our brains for a few days.

Fortunately, we’ve come back brimming with a number of new and exciting ideas and technologies that you can expect to be implemented into Pre-M, Simfox and a number of our other computer based security training and testing packages.

We’ll keep you posted.

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