EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY
Pictures or descriptive phrases representing steps in a
continuous technical process or successive events in a dramatic
 or anecdotal series may be presented in disarranged
and apparently haphazard order with instructions to place
them in proper sequence.
A variation requires the subject himself to supply the last
step in the process or series.
Directions tests are not concerned so much with measuring
informational content as with determining the ability to
carry out more or less complicated instructions. There is
no limit to the possibilities of such tests. They are good
measures of alertness. Examples are to be found in the
army report (228) and in Woodworth and Wells (225).
The familiar Woodworth and Wells Hard Directions test
commences:
With your pencil make a dot over any one of these letters F G
H IJ], and a comma after the longest of these three words: boy
mother girl. Then, if Christmas comes in March, make a cross
right here. .....but if not, pass along to the next question, and
tell where the sun rises............ If you believe that Edison
discovered America, cross out what you just wrote, but if it was
some one else, put in a number to complete this sentence: “A horse
has. .....feet.”
Such droll content never fails to provoke merriment, as
well as maximum effort in the persons being examined. It
should, however, not be used unless the testing program is
firmly intrenched, because business executives do not like
to be placed in the position of advocating anything which
gives the impression of being ludicrous. Psychological testing
 has made distinctly slower headway in industry than it
would have done if some of the test materials had been
chosen with more care to avoid any unnecessary appearance
of the frivolous or silly.
It would be beyond the scope of this chapter to attempt
a complete summary of the possibilities in verbal testing.
Additional methods of test construction are illustrated by

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