Choosing the Appropriate Test

Several questions need to be asked in choosing an evaluation test that will measure what you want to know:

1. Am I interested in self-evaluation or evaluation by others? If you want to know what others think, you must ask them, not take a test yourself.

2. What activity or attribute do 1 want to measure? No test measures everything. Most are quite specific. You must isolate what you want to measure (leadership, for example, or spiritual gifts) and then choose an appropriate test.

3. What is the purpose of my assessment? Am I looking for strengths? (If so, take a nonjudgmental test, such as the Myers-Briggs.) Am I looking for weaknesses to improve? (Some tests are quite straightforward in recommending, to the administrators and counselors at least, plans for change.) Am I looking for a test that will tell me how I fit in a certain context?

4. What time frame am I considering? How I feel today may not be a true measure of long-term patterns. Different tests are set up to evaluate different time frames.

5. What do I want to measure myself against? There are at least four different standards: comparative (a select group of people—co-workers, for example), normative (the average of all people "like me"), goal-centered (a task or goal I want to achieve), improvement (how I did on the same test last year).

—Terry Muck