QUESTION TRADE TESTS
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be developed by means of the technique of psychology
if they are to be at once practical and reliable.
A further development of the question method is to
base the questions asked on pictures or blueprints. A tool
maker, for instance, might be shown a group of blueprints
calling for operations on different machine tools and asked
to name, offhand, various machines which are required
for each. A machinist might be shown a picture of a
collection of machine parts and tools and asked to name
them. A third method is to give the applicant an opportunity
to demonstrate his ability by giving him some
representative task to perform. This type of test will
be more fully discussed in a following chapter.
In formulating and standardizing tests for trades and
other technical occupations, too much emphasis cannot
be placed upon the close cooperation between the technical
expert and the psychologist. The former alone can
supply the facts necessary for the meat of a test. However,
it is equally true that the technical expert cannot, as
a rule, use his knowledge in the manner required by an
employment test or interview. This deficiency must be
supplemented by the psychologist, whose assistance in
formulating the details and standards of a test and in
giving it an experimental trial, is indispensable to its
success.
Even when the tests to be used have already been devised
by experts elsewhere, their installation in another
company should be handled with equal caution. Technical
experts from that company should be called on to
examine the proposed tests and to see whether they really
apply to their work. After the necessary revisions have
been made, the tests should be tried out according to
the usual method to see if they actually correlate. It is
