MENTAL TESTS IN INDUSTRY
The case for scientific mental tests as a prerequisite to the employment
of beginners in business and industry has been well put by Dr. Henry C.
Link. In addressing a convention of California railroad men, Doctor Link
said:
“Would you, gentlemen, enter into a contract to buy material from a
concern, the excellence of whose product you had grave reason to doubt?
Would you place orders to the extent of three and one half millions of
dollars a year, waive inspection of material, accept whatever was
offered you, and make no effort to get your money’s worth? You would
not—not if you expected to hold your job. And yet, that is what you are
doing with respect to the public education system of California. In 1916
the railroads of this state paid in operative taxes $7,151,583. Of this
sum 51 per cent., or $3,647,300, was used for purposes of public
education.
“_The boys and girls sent you from the public schools you take into your
service, sometimes after a perfunctory mental examination, generally
with none_; in other words, _you waive inspection_, and then complain of
the character of material after it has reached you and been paid for.”
It is, of course, in the case of the untried beginner in business or
industrial life, the boy or girl fresh from school who has as yet had no
opportunity to discover or to demonstrate his or her ability or
capacity, that the application of scientific mental tests is most
essential.
The skilled worker of long experience, master of his craft or of one or
another of the specialized mechanical operations that enter so largely
into modern industrial processes, has already found a definite place in
the scheme of things and a simple trade or performance test is all that
is required to indicate where that place is. For the present, at least,
we are concerned with the worker of this class only long enough to point
out, in passing, that a generally adopted scheme of intelligence
measurement might have disclosed the possession by any individual of
this group of abilities that would have given him a broader field and a
happier and more useful existence, had he and those responsible for
giving him a start in life been made aware of them early enough. Even
to-day, when he has been engaged in his narrowly limited field of work
for the better part of his active working life, he may have latent or
undeveloped mental capacity such as would qualify him for more
important, better-paid employment were some means provided for
disclosing its existence.
There is, in fact, no degree or kind of employment for which a more
intelligent and satisfactory selection of employees cannot be made by
means of properly devised mental tests, accurately applied, than by any
other method now in use. Under the direction of Dr. Walter Dill Scott
the Carnegie School of Scientific Salesmanship of Pittsburgh has
demonstrated the usefulness of the scientific method when applied not
only in the selection and training of salesmen but for the choosing of
men qualified for the most important executive positions in large
industrial and business establishments. A large number, possibly as many
as a hundred, of the largest industrial corporations of America have
already (1919) adopted in whole or in part some system of scientific
mental tests for the classification and grading of present employees,
the selection of new employees, and the filling of vacancies by
promotion. It is the unanimous testimony, whenever a properly devised
system of tests has been applied in accordance with scientific methods
and without prejudice, that the actual saving in time and expense as
well as in the disorganization resulting from a heavy “labour turnover”
has in every case been highly profitable from the employer’s viewpoint,
while it almost goes without saying that the benefit to the employee in
being accurately placed in the position in which he is best fitted by
his natural mental endowment and capacity to function makes for
individual contentment and satisfaction and for steadier and presumably
higher earning power than the old hit-or-miss method could possibly do.
Next to the beginner in industry or business, the boy or girl starting
his or her vocational career, the class to which the application of
scientific mental tests is of the greatest benefit to employer and
worker alike is the large group of unskilled, untrained workers, men and
women of no particular trade, the “floaters” and seasonal workers, who
turn their hands to whatever employment opportunity offers without
developing especial skill at any one recognized trade or occupation.
In our modern industrial system, a very considerable part of the
personnel of our factories, shops, and stores consists of this class of
untrained workers. They try their hands at many things and fail in most.
They constitute the majority of those who respond to “Help Wanted”
advertisements and are willing to try any sort of work; their chief
occupation in life is hunting for jobs.
This need not remain forever true. Because there is not in general use
any intelligent or accurate method of determining whether or not any one
of these unskilled, untrained workers possesses the elementary mental
capacities requisite for a particular sort of employment, it is not
surprising that most of them fail to make good in the jobs into which
they are indiscriminately shovelled. Yet the great majority of them do
possess mental capacity of a nature and degree which, once it is
ascertained, indicates their definite fitness for some particular sort
of work no less than it does their definite unfitness for many other
kinds of work which they are prone to undertake.
Just as war conditions brought into the Army an enormous mass of young
men whose capacity and special abilities had to be determined by
scientific tests before they could be assigned to the places where they
could most usefully serve in the military scheme of things, so the same
exigency of war brought into the industries of the country, largely
centred upon the production of munitions of war, millions of women
without industrial experience or vocational training but upon whose
efforts the nation had mainly to rely for the output of weapons,
ammunition, military equipment and accessories without which the Army
and Navy could not have functioned. In a large class of plants engaged
in munition production the chief demand was for sufficient muscular
strength, with a slight modicum of intelligence, for the operation of
automatic machinery. But in the vitally important work of inspecting,
testing, and sorting the finished product of even the most highly
perfected automatic machines and in many of the more delicate operations
of assembling and adjusting devices and apparatus made up of a number of
more or less complicated parts, intelligence and mental capacity of
several different kinds and ranging up to fairly high degrees were
called for.
In a number of the larger munitions establishments scientific mental
tests were adopted for the selection and assignment to particular tasks
of the women workers. Wherever this was done it was found that the
output was increased, a higher average of quality maintained, and the
labour turnover greatly reduced.
In one of the largest groups of munitions plants at Bridgeport, Conn.,
there was worked out, under the direction of Dr. Henry C. Link, a system
of scientific mental tests which checked up so closely with the actual
results obtained by the most skilful workers that their adoption for the
examination of all applicants for these positions resulted in very
definite time and money savings and increase in plant efficiency.
Two types of work, conducted side by side in the same room, were settled
upon as the most fruitful fields for the first experiment. The work
chosen was that of inspecting shells before they had been loaded, and of
gauging them for head-thickness. This work was being done by 330 girls,
two thirds of whom were engaged in inspection and one third in gauging.
The work of inspecting shells was done at a table constructed like an
upturned, shallow box. Upon this table was dumped a large box of brass
shells, not yet loaded, and all of exactly the same kind. The work of
each girl was to inspect these shells and throw out those that were
defective. A girl would first gather up a handful of shells, being
careful to have them all pointing in the same direction. Then she would
put both hands around the shells and turn them up so as to expose their
insides. She would then look down into every shell for dents, scratches,
stains, and other very minute defects. When any such defect was
discovered the shell was extracted from the pile and thrown into one of
three or four “scrap” boxes. The entire handful was then turned over and
the head of every shell examined for various defects. The shells were
then held in a horizontal position on the left hand and allowed to roll
from the pile into the right hand. Each shell, in rolling, exposed its
lateral surface and was closely scrutinized for scratches, dents, oil
stains, and other defects. The good ones were taken in the right hand
and dropped into a pocket at the right side of the table, through which
they fell into a box below.
This operation required good eyesight (in order to distinguish defects,
which frequently were so minute as to be indistinguishable to all but
the best of eyes); keen visual discrimination (the ability to determine,
with a few glances, which shells were defective); quick reaction
(ability to extract, as quickly as seen, the defective shell and toss it
into the appropriate box); accuracy of movement (ability to pick out the
right shell from a closely held handful); steadiness of attention
(ability to prevent bad shells from slipping by or unduly lengthening
the operation).
A set of eight tests was selected for the body of the experiment. The
first was a simple eyesight test. The second was a card sorting test.
The subject was given a pack of 49 cards, upon the face of each one of
which from 7 to 12 letters were distributed promiscuously. Twenty of the
cards contained the letter “O” and the rest did not. The subject was
asked to sort these into two piles, those which had “O” on them and
those which had not. The time required for this performance was taken
and the number of errors recorded. The object of the test was to bring
out the subject’s ability to pick out the essential element from a more
or less heterogeneous collection of elements, and also, in some measure,
to bring out the deftness of the subject in handling cards.
The third test was a cancellation test. The subject was requested to
cross out, with a pencil, every 7. The fourth was a simple “Easy
Directions” test. The fifth was a number-checking test, in which the
subject was asked to place a check opposite every group which contained
both a 7 and a 1. The sixth test was a tapping test, in which the
subject was required to push down, as rapidly as possible, a telegraph
key to which was attached a counter. The number of recorded thrusts over
a period of one minute constituted a record for that performance. The
seventh test was an accuracy test. This was given with the aid of a
brass plate with nine holes, graduated in size from ½ inch to ⅛ inch in
diameter. The subject was asked to take a brass-pointed pencil and
insert it into each hole, beginning with the largest and continuing
through the smaller ones, until the pointer touched the brass side of
one of them. The brass-pointed pencil was wired in circuit with the
brass plate containing the holes so that, whenever the brass point
touched the side of the hole or any part of the brass plate, an electric
contact was made which produced a click in a telephone receiver which
the subject held to her ear. At the start of the test, the subject was
instructed to put the brass pencil into each hole in succession until
she heard a click in her ear, when she was to start all over again. The
speed of the subject’s movements was controlled by a metronome, so as to
allow thirty trials per minute. This test occupied from two to three
minutes.
The eighth test was a steadiness test. This consisted of two brass bars
about twelve inches long, set so as to form a long, horizontal V. The
subject was asked to take the brass pointer and pass it along between
these two bars. The farther she went, the narrower became the space
between the bars. As soon as the brass pointer touched one of the bars
it produced a click in the telephone receiver. The point at which this
brass pointer touched was then read on a scale on the lower bar. Each
subject was given fifteen trials and the last ten were averaged and
constituted the subject’s average.
These eight tests were given to seventy-three girls, fifty-two of whom
were inspectors and twenty-one gaugers. The scores in the tests were
compared with the average daily work of the girls. This average was
obtained by recording the number of pounds of shells inspected by the
girls and the number of hours required for the work. It was found that
the inspectors who inspected the largest number of shells in a given
time attained the largest scores in the tests, thereby indicating the
value of the tests in determining whether an applicant for work as an
inspector had the mental capacity for the work.
The same tests were given to the twenty-one girls engaged in gauging the
head-thickness of shells. This work does not require the use of the
eyes. The operator simply picks up a handful of shells and, with or
without looking, tries the head of each shell on a gauge. The gauge is a
piece of steel with two notches or openings. The shells which are too
small pass through the first opening and fall into a box of rejects
below. Those that do not fall through are tried on the second opening
and, if they pass through, they are of the right size. If they fail to
pass through they are too large and are thrown aside. The operator sits
in front of her gauge and tries each shell at one opening and then
another, just as rapidly as she can move her hands up and down.
The tests showed, in this instance, an entirely different set of
correlations. The comparative correlation scores follow:
════════════════════════════════╤══════════
TESTS INSPECTORS│ GAUGERS
────────────────────────────────┼──────────
Card Sorting .55│ .05
Tapping .14│ .52
Cancellation .63│ .17
General Intelligence .14│ .18
Number Group Checking .72│ —.19
────────────────────────────────┴──────────
Perfect agreement between average daily work and score in the test would
be indicated by a correlation score of 1.00, while lack of relationship
would be indicated by a correlation of 0 or nearly 0.
The score of the gaugers in the tapping test (.52) showed that they were
speedier and had greater endurance. This seems reasonable since, in the
operation of gauging, speed of movement and endurance are the chief
factors. In the visual discrimination tests, such as card sorting,
cancellation, and number group checking, the scores of the inspectors
were higher. This quality, however, was not necessary to successful
operation in gauging.
In other operations the results of these tests proved their value as a
factor in eliminating blunders in the employment office. Girls who
seemed, from observation, to possess the very qualities necessary for
one or another operation, frequently puzzled their superiors by their
failure to perform some highly important operation of their work. The
eight tests would have demonstrated this particular inability and would
have saved thousands of dollars lost through delay and mistakes. Similar
results were obtained in experiments with men workers.
In almost every industrial enterprise, clerical work of some kind or
another is necessary, and a problem of universal interest has developed
around the selection of clerks. The time required to “break in” new
employees runs from two weeks to two months, according to the nature of
the routine, and this process invariably is very expensive. By means of
standardized mental tests the whole process may be greatly simplified.
In an experiment recently reported tests were given to fifty-two men and
women engaged in clerical and near-clerical work. An aggregate number of
440 tests was given. The manager of the department had made a study of
these people and had attempted to rate them as to their actual ability.
The tests were classified under the head of tests for _technique_ and
tests for _intelligence_. By _technique_ is meant the speed and accuracy
shown by clerks in sorting tickets and papers, posting and adding
columns of figures, indexing and filing, and in other routine clerical
operations. The term _intelligence_ is interpreted to designate the
facility and success with which a clerk could master new tasks and
follow directions about new work assigned from time to time. The clerk’s
_technique_ was indicated by steadiness, arithmetic, card sorting, and
substitution-of-letters tests. The _intelligence_ tests included a
“hard-directions” test and an “abstract-relations” test, similar to
those given in the Mentimeter in this volume.
When all the tests had been given the results were computed and
tabulated so as to bring out the following points: (1) the rank of each
individual with reference to all the rest; (2) the relation of each of
four groups to each other; (3) the relation between technique and
intelligence. The results were then submitted to the office head, who
compared them with his records and with his own opinion of the relative
merits of the various individuals. This comparison showed a very marked
agreement between the testimony of the tests and the rankings of the
office manager.
The results of these tests so impressed the office manager that he
decided to give them to all incoming clerks. One of the first candidates
to be examined was a young woman who had recently been interviewed by
one of the office heads. The candidate was so unprepossessing in
appearance that in spite of signs testifying to her intelligence, the
office head was in doubt as to the advisability of hiring her. The
psychological tests were applied. When this was done the young woman did
remarkably well in every test. She was then hired, and proved herself so
ready and capable that it was decided to train her for the work of an
office assistant. In six weeks she had mastered the routine of four
different kinds of work. This was a striking instance in which the
testimony of the tests belied the testimony of observation.
Although there were certain inadequacies in the tests applied, as well
as in the judgments obtained from office heads, the value of the results
became more and more clear with each passing month. For example, 188
clerks recommended on the basis of the tests and followed up at
intervals of one month for a period of three months were estimated as
follows:
Percentage of those called good by their superiors
At the end of one month 75%
At the end of two months 89%
At the end of three months 92%
Another series of interesting experiments to determine the mental
capacity of workers in industry was directed at stenographers, typists,
and comptometrists. The work of these kinds of workers has been
specialized by the use of a standard machine, and in applying tests to
this kind of work it was necessary, therefore, to take into
consideration two important factors: first, the skill already acquired
by the workers at a certain machine; second, the aptitude which the
worker possessed for improvement in the use of the machine.
Relevant tests were given to two senior classes of more than three
hundred girls and boys in a commercial high school, to seventy-six
pupils in two business schools, to a group of twenty-two office typists,
to another group of nineteen stenographers, to over four hundred
candidates for positions as typists and stenographers, to three groups
of more than one hundred and forty comptometrists; and finally, to more
than one hundred and twenty candidates for comptometry. More than one
thousand persons were tested and more than five thousand tests were
given.
Tests for typists included copying, spelling, substitution, and the
Trabue Completion test. In the copying and spelling tests, office forms
were used. A number of words, purposely misspelled in characteristic
fashion, were mingled with words correctly spelled, and the applicant
was asked to check off those incorrectly spelled. It was discovered, in
the substitution test, that if an applicant without much previous
experience in typing does very well in the test, the indication is that
she has the necessary aptitude or potential ability to become a good
typist with practice. The success of the applicant in the Trabue
Completion test indicated his or her ability to complete sentences parts
of which are missing. The ability to do this is a great advantage to the
typist and one which will increase her capacity.
The Trabue Completion test also proved valuable in determining the
ability of stenographers. The most important test probably, for a
stenographer, is of her ability to take and transcribe dictation. Tests
were given as nearly as possible at the speed which was best adapted to
the applicant’s ability. The results were then graded on the basis of
the total time consumed and the amount of work done correctly.
In experiments for determining the ability of computing-machine
operators various tests were used. One of the most important was a
mental-arithmetic test. This was designed to determine the applicant’s
fundamental knowledge of arithmetic. Another was a numerical
substitution test. In each of the tests conducted the scores of the
applicants were compared with the rankings made previously by department
heads, and in most instances there was an agreement of sufficient
approximation to indicate the value of the tests.
Although still in its infancy, as it were, so far as its practical
application in industry goes, the scientific method of mental
measurement, wherever and whenever applied in accordance with true
psychological principles and by standards and methods devised by trained
psychologists, has so completely demonstrated its economic value and
social usefulness that its general adoption, as these facts become more
generally known, seems inevitable.