Although this test would seem at first glance to be particularly well adapted to the selection of clerical workers, past experience has convinced the writers that it is also useful in the selection of organizers and directors of men as well as of organizers and directors of thought. The relationship between the score in this test and the general efficiency of an employee is unusually high.
Teachers will find the Reading Vocabulary a splendid index of the advancement attained by new pupils coming into their rooms for the first time or of the pupils who have been with them for some time. It is useless to try to have pupils explain the meaning of magazine articles or of selections from their geographies when they do not even understand the words used in these discussions. It would be very much worth while for a teacher, when she has employed this test, to compare the difficulty of the words which cause the majority of her class to stumble and fail with the difficulty of the words used in the ordinary text-books of the school.
In any social group the classification of the forty words in this list would be found rather interesting particularly when the errors made by different members of the group were read aloud for the amusement of the entire group. It should not be suggested, when the test is to be used in this way, that there is any distinct relationship between achievement in the test and achievement in life, else some of the group will be very much disappointed in their scores.
Every effort should be made to have such a group feel that this was simply a new type of puzzle. The results obtained under such conditions should not be compared with the results obtained under the standard conditions outlined below.
Directions for Giving the Test.
The candidates to be examined should be comfortably seated and provided with well-sharpened pencils. The examiner should then announce that the booklets which he would distribute were not to be opened until instructions to that effect were issued. Booklets should be distributed unopened, one to each individual. Further directions should be issued as soon as each candidate is supplied with the booklet, authorizing each individual to write his name, his age, and such other information as is desirable on the title page of the booklet. When these preliminaries have been finished the examiner should say:
“When I ask you to open your booklet, you will find on the inside a list of forty different words. The test is to determine how many of these words you can read and identify. At the top of the page you will find the words, Animal, Body, Bird, Colour, Clothes, Fish, Time, Tool, and War. Each of the forty words to be identified is connected with or is a kind of Animal, Body, Bird, Colour, or other kind of thing mentioned at the top of the page. The page is ruled both ways. You are to look at each word in the column on the left and to make a check mark at the right of it, under the general word showing whether the word you are marking is an Animal, a Body, a Bird, or something else. You will be allowed exactly four minutes in which to check the words. Mark as many of the words as you possibly can but be sure to check them correctly. Ready! Go!”
| Indicate the meaning of each of the forty words in the column on the left by making a mark (✓) under the proper word. | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CONNECTED WITH, OR A KIND OF | ||||||||||
| ANIMAL | BODY | BIRD | COLOUR | CLOTHES | FISH | TIME | TOOL | WAR | ||
| arm | 1 | |||||||||
| cow | 2 | |||||||||
| stocking | 3 | |||||||||
| yellow | 4 | |||||||||
| sparrow | 5 | |||||||||
| shirt | 6 | |||||||||
| calf | 7 | |||||||||
| hammer | 8 | |||||||||
| shin | 9 | |||||||||
| saw | 10 | |||||||||
| wren | 11 | |||||||||
| tan | 12 | |||||||||
| cod | 13 | |||||||||
| troops | 14 | |||||||||
| year | 15 | |||||||||
| conquer | 16 | |||||||||
| stag | 17 | |||||||||
| minnow | 18 | |||||||||
| month | 19 | |||||||||
| kimono | 20 | |||||||||
| rampart | 21 | |||||||||
| thigh | 22 | |||||||||
| carmine | 23 | |||||||||
| partridge | 24 | |||||||||
| sturgeon | 25 | |||||||||
| ratchet | 26 | |||||||||
| interim | 27 | |||||||||
| peccary | 28 | |||||||||
| mauve | 29 | |||||||||
| citadel | 30 | |||||||||
| ephemeral | 31 | |||||||||
| tartan | 32 | |||||||||
| peritoneum | 33 | |||||||||
| petrel | 34 | |||||||||
| tench | 35 | |||||||||
| vomer | 36 | |||||||||
| burgonet | 37 | |||||||||
| burin | 38 | |||||||||
| desman | 39 | |||||||||
| tinamou | 40 | |||||||||
At the end of exactly four minutes the examiner should call “Stop! Time up! Close your papers and hand them to me.” All papers should be collected at once.