PeopleCLUES is a set of three leading edge, validated behavioural assessments that measure personality traits, cognitive abilities and attitudes. The assessment range was developed in specific response to a large market research study.

The PeopleCLUES range of assessments was created using the latest research on validation and is designed to be used throughout the life cycle for employees for selection, development, succession planning, career development and strategic workforce planning.

The three assessments can be administered together or individually, online or paper and pencil.

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The PeopleCLUES personality assessment is built upon the well-accepted Big Five concept of core personality traits and also includes a Teamwork scale as well as a Good Impression scale. These core personality traits are measured with a seventy item assessment that takes approximately ten minutes to complete.

The five core measures are:

• Conscientious vs Carefree: Describes the degree to which the individual is persistent, motivated, and organised, ranging from being highly disciplined and dependable to being carefree.
• Likeable vs Tough-Minded: Describes the degree to which the person is pleasant and agreeable, ranging from being warm, tolerant, and tactful, to being tough-minded, skeptical and direct.
• Un-Conventional vs Rules Oriented: Describes the degree to which the individual is predictable, rules oriented and structured, to being open to new ideas, adventuresome and inconsistent.
• Extroverted vs Introverted: Describes the style and focus of an individual’s emotional energy, ranging from being outgoing, dominant, ambitious, and sociable, to being introverted, shy, and quiet.
• Stability vs Sensitivity: Involves the degree to which an individual is emotionally stable and resistant to stress, ranging from being well-adjusted, calm, self-confident, and poised, to being sensitive and anxious.

Additional scales critical to most jobs:

• Teamwork: In addition, PeopleCLUES includes a Teamwork scale that measures the applicant’s attitudes towards teamwork versus individualised work environments.
• Good Impression: A validity scale that measures the degree to which the person has responded frankly to the test items or is responding in such a way as to make a good impression.

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There is little question among organisational psychologists that cognitive ability—the ability to process and retain information quickly—is a necessary skill that transcends most jobs.

For most jobs there is a range of cognitive ability associated with on-the-job success; a higher level of cognitive ability is not necessarily associated with job success. What matters is the fit with the requirements of the job.

The PeopleCLUES Cognitive Assessment is a timed seven minute thirty item exercise that measures:

• Speed of learning new things
• Speed of problem solving
• Willingness to work with more repetitive tasks
• Ability to think strategically

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The PeopleCLUES Attitude Assessment measures six areas of potentially counter-productive behaviours by a self-descriptive inventory that taps areas of concern as well a Good Impression (validity) scale.

Four core scales are measured in approximately seven to ten minutes:

• Conscientious (Dependability): Describes the degree to which the individual lacks persistence, work motivation, and organisation, ranging from being lackadaisical and careless to being highly disciplined and dependable.
• Hostility (Aggression): Describes the degree to which the person is not able to suppress angry feeling but rather expresses anger physically or verbally to co-workers and thus poses a real risk in the workplace.
• Integrity (Honesty): Involves the degree to which the person is likely to engage in pilferage, short-changing customers, falsifying expense accounts, lying to protect him- or herself, exaggerating one’s job qualifications and other acts of dishonesty.
• Good Impression: A validity scale that measures the degree to which the person has responded truthfully to the test items or is responding in such a way as to make a good impression.

Three optional scales are measured in approximately five to seven minutes

• Substance Abuse: Describes the possibility that this person might use illegal drugs or alcohol while at work, might show up for work either drunk or high or badly hung over, and thus pose a safety risk because of impaired perception or judgment.
• Sexual Harassment: Involves the likelihood that this person will ask co-workers for sexual favours, make sexual remarks that upset colleagues, tell dirty jokes, or otherwise behave inappropriately at work.
• Computer Misuse: Describes the possibility that this person might abuse the organisation’s computers to send and/or receive personal e-mails, surf the Internet, transact personal business, or otherwise violate company computer-use policies.

The core assessment is eighty true/false questions. If all the optional scales are added, the assessment is 140 questions with a time frame of seven minutes to seventeen minutes if all the scales are used.

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The PeopleCLUES assessments were constructed in accordance with the revised Principles for the Validation and Use of Personnel Selection Procedures (2003), developed by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology—a division of the American Psychological Association and the revised Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (1999) promulgated jointly by:

• The American Educational Research Association
• The American Psychological Association
• The National Council on Measurement in Education (US)

The PeopleCLUES Assessments have been designed specifically for business selection, development and training. It is not, and was never developed as a clinical tool and does not fall under any of the guidelines as a medical test.

The PeopleCLUES Personality and Cognitive Assessments

The PeopleCLUES Personality Assessment is a seventy item assessment based on the Five-Factor approach to personality measurement and the PeopleCLUES Cognitive Assessment is a thirty item assessment. These assessments have been standardised on a sample of over 6,000 applicants for employment at a variety of companies across the United States. This research, summarised in a recent (2005) technical manual, provides strong support for the reliability and validity of PeopleCLUES in screening applicants for employment.

The PeopleCLUES Attitude Assessment

A pool of 224 items was created to tap the six domains of counterproductive behaviour as well as the Good Impression scale. These items were administered to successive waves of volunteers from a variety of employers. Those items that best correlated with the total score of that particular scale were included in the next wave of testing, until twenty items for each scale had been selected for inclusion in the final test. Each of the twenty items included in the final version of the test correlated at least .75 with the total score of that scale. This item selection process was the initial step in creating a valid instrument.

The construct validity of PeopleCLUES Attitude Assessment is also clearly apparent in the selection process. The obvious items with clear face or construct validity invariably have the highest internal consistency. All of the items in the PeopleCLUES Attitude Assessment are direct inquiries into the behaviours subsumed in that domain and no subtle items were included in even the initial pool of 224 items.

The high internal consistency of the PeopleCLUES Attitude Assessment is shown in the uniformly high Cronbach alphas that have been obtained in all of the test samples, typically in the .79-.88 range depending upon the composition of the test sample. Test-retest reliabilities of PeopleCLUES Attitude Assessment scales ranged from .77 to .88 with a median correlation of .86. These compare favourably with previously reported internal consistencies (Cronbach alphas).

The major issue inherent in any use of a pre-employment screening process is the degree to which it differentiates potentially successful applicants from those unlikely to be successful. Assess Systems Australia will work collaboratively with our client’s staff to ensure that PeopleCLUES provides such differentiation. Specifically, we will benchmark jobs to identify the pattern of test scores that can identify potentially successful employees. Once this pattern is established, we will collaborate to determine the effectiveness of PeopleCLUES in improving the quality of those candidates selected for employment.

As we are continually updating our technical studies, it is our intention to extend these validity studies and we would be eager to work with any clients to design, conduct and analyse such research data.

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