[6] "Conduct of Mind Series," D. Appleton & Co., New York.
CHAPTER V
SPECIALIZED VOCATIONAL TESTS AND METHODS
The absence of complete vocational psychographs has not retarded the search for tests which, though more or less fragmentary, may have vocational significance. In fact, there are some twenty types of work for which tests have already been proposed, recommended, and more or less tentatively tried out. A brief account of these, with references to the more complete literature, will be given here, and some attempt made to evaluate the tests themselves.
Substitutes for the vocational psychograph, in the way of partial and suggestive tests, have been proposed in four different forms. Since the work of the immediate future will probably develop along these same lines, these four forms will be indicated here, and typical illustrations cited in each case.
A. There is first what may be called the method of the vocational miniature. Here the entire work, or some selected and important part of it, is reproduced on a small scale by using toy apparatus or in some such way duplicating the actual situation which the worker faces when engaged at his task. Thus McComas, in testing telephone operators, constructed a miniature switchboard and put the operators through actual calls and responses, meanwhile measuring their speed and accuracy by means of chronometric attachments. Stern and others recommend tests of the fidelity of report of a witness in court by letting him observe some rehearsed scene, some motion picture representation of a series of events, or some pictorial portrayal of a scene or episode, and examining into the faithfulness with which he can describe what he there saw.
B. Closely related to this method of miniature performance is that of taking an actual piece of the work to be performed and sampling the candidate's ability by his success in this trial. Thus, in connection with the recommendation of clerks and assistants from among the boys in commercial high schools it is common to test their ability from time to time throughout their course by assigning them small pieces of work similar to that which they might later be required to perform in business offices and shops. Finding addresses and numbers in a telephone directory, carrying out involved verbal instructions and directions from memory, computing calculations, recommending action on the basis of their figures, making out a trial balance, a trial chemical analysis, etc., are common forms of this type of test. In certain cases such specimens of work have been devised in or taken into the psychological laboratory and the worker watched more closely and measured more exactly. This has been done, for instance, by Thorndike in the case of clerical workers and salesmen, by Paynter in the case of judges of trade-mark infringements, by Scott in the case of salesmen, and by others in the case of tests for handwriting experts.
C. A third method has been that of analogy. Some test is devised which bears real or supposed resemblance to the sort of situation met by the worker in the given occupational activity. The material is new, but the attitude and endeavor of the worker seem to be much the same. There is indeed usually a tacit or expressed belief that the same simple or complex mental processes or psychological functions are involved in the two cases, although the precise nature of this function has seldom been clearly stated. Thus girls employed in sorting steel ball-bearings, and also typesetters, have been selected on the basis of their speed of reaction to a sound stimulus. Münsterberg has suggested that marine officers who can quickly perceive a situation and choose an appropriate mode of reaction to it may be selected by letting candidates sort into their appropriate piles a deck of cards bearing different combinations of letters. The same investigator has described a test for motormen which, while being neither a miniature of their required work nor yet a sample of it, is said to produce in them much the same mental attitude. In another case telephone operators were tested for speed in canceling certain letters from a newspaper page, in the belief that this work involved an ability that was also required at the switchboard, although there directed to different material. McComas has described a dot-striking test for measuring accuracy of aim or motor coördination, which forms an essential factor in manipulating a switchboard.