EMPLOYMENT TEST ASSIGNMENT
PAPI-N

Laura Reyes Rodríguez

Sheridan College Institute of Technology
And Advanced Learning

November 21st, 2013

EMPLOYEMENT TEST ASSIGNMENT
PAPI-N

1. A description of the test.

The Personality and Preferences Inventory-Normative (PAPI-N) is a personality questionnaire designed to assess needs and behavior patterns relevant to the workplace. (Sanz et al., 2006)

The PAPI-N was originally designed by Dr Max Kostick in the 1960’s, based on Murray’s need-press theory of psychogenic needs, which is one of the most influential theories in personality psychology (The British Psychological Society, 2006). According to Murray, our personalities are a reflection of behaviours controlled by needs. Some of those needs are temporary and change constantly, while other needs are deeply founded in our nature. Murray suggested that these psychogenic needs function on the unconscious level, but play a major role in our personality. (About.com, 2013). Dr. Kostick original idea was to create a tool that could be used by non-psychologist, and because of that he avoided the use of clinical terminology in the interpretation. PAPI was originally conceived as an ipsative test for use as a counselling and discussion tool. After several revisions, PAPI has extended its application and now there are two versions of the PAPI, the PAPI-I, which is an ipsative version, and the PAPI-N, which is a normative version. This is the suitable one for a work environment, where there is a need to make judgements about a person in order establish comparison with others.

The assessment indicates how an individual is likely to react in a given work or team situation. PAPI-N maps out an individual’s personality, providing valuable information about their preferences and typical behaviour at work. This allows HR professionals to assess whether an individual has the qualities needed to be successful in a role, a team, or a business culture and enables areas for development to be identified (cubiks.com, 2013). The test was primarily designed for use with managers, professional, senior technical staff, white-collar supervisors and graduate trainees, among other administrative and professional roles.
The PAPI-N comprises 126 single statements. Respondents are required to indicate the extent to which they agree/disagree with the statements on a seven point rating scale. The PAPI-N incorporates a six-item ‘Social Desirability’ scale, which measures the tendency of respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others. Scores are initially computed on 20 scales; 10 role scales and 10 need scales. Needs are considered as internal determinants of behaviour that leads the aim to achieve need satisfaction and avoid need frustration. On the other hand, roles refer to situational characteristics that put pressure on the person to behave in certain ways. Roles are considered as determinants of behaviour which include external influences. These 20 personality dimensions measured by PAPI-N are clustered together in seven key areas: agreeableness, active dominance, conscientious persistence, openness to experience, seeking to achieve, sociability and work tempo.

Role Scales | Need Scales | Leadership role (L) | Need to control others (P) | Organized type (C) | Need for rules and supervision (W) | Attention to detail (D) | Need for change (Z) | Conceptual thinker (R) | Need to finish a task (N) | Social harmonizer (S) | Need to be noticed (X) | Ease in decision making (I) | Need to belong to groups (B | Work pace (T) | Need to relate closely to individuals (O) | Emotional restraint (E) | Need to be forceful (K) | Role of the hard worker (G) | Need to achieve (A) | Integrative planner (H) | Need to be supportive (F) |
PAPI-N allows to create an ideal job profile. This profile reflects the personality characteristics required to perform the job/role effectively. Candidate’s results for the 20 scales are compared to the expected results previously identified for high performers. Some of the advantages of the job profile are: * Focusses the PAPI user on those areas deemed important. * Provides a common language between HR and line managers/supervisors
Can be used to facilitate development of the role as well as the person.
PAPI is scored automatically and immediately through Cubiks online system. Cubiks is a company based in UK which owns the property rights of the test
While completing PAPI-N, the respondent is required to choose the option that best reflects the degree to which the statement describes how he/she is at work.
The results are expressed in a variety of reports that are automatically generated after the completion of the test. * Wheel report: Provide a visual representation of the individual’s personality profile, mapped out as a PAPI wheel diagram. * Manager-Recruiter narrative report: Provides a concise interpretation of the individual’s responses to the PAPI questionnaire grouped into seven broad areas of behaviour. This report is written in a user-friendly language for non-experts. * Job profile report: Visually illustrate how the respondent’s PAPI profile relates to the requirements of the role * Competency Based Interview Guide Report: Relate the results from PAPI to the competencies of specific importance to the role, offering interviewers targeted questions as well as hints and tips to help them focus interviews on the most vital areas. * Respondent Feedback Report: Provides candidates a personal feedback report on the assessment.

This is an example of the kind of questions that can be found in PAPI-N * I always work very hard * Absolutely disagree * Greatly disagree * Slightly disagree * Neither agree or disagree * Slightly agree * Greatly agree * Absolutely Agree

As PAPI-N is an online assessment and is protected under copyright legislation, it was impossible to obtain a copy of the test for the purpose of this assignment.

2. How is the test used by the employer? Where does it fit in the selection process? Is it used as a knockout test?

PAPI-N is used as an initial step in the recruitment process by Actual Group, an HR consulting firm based in Spain, the Dominican Republic and several countries in Latin America. The test was introduced to me by Natalia Batista, CEO of the firm in the Dominican Republic.

According to Mrs. Batista, the evaluation process follows these steps:

1. The hiring company is responsible for provide an ideal profile for the job. 2. The candidate is contacted and requested to complete the PAPI-N questionnaire online. The test can be completed in approximately 15-20 minutes. a. After completing the test, the online platform is able for providing results in the form of different reports which are considered by the HR professional. However, Actual Group always takes into account the Manager-Recruiter Narrative Report. 3. The candidate is also requested to complete an analysis exercise in order to assess competencies related to analytic skills (such as analytical thinking, logical judgment) 4. Based on the results from both evaluation tools, the candidate can continue or not to the following step, which is a competency-based interview.

As we can see in the process, PAPI-N is used as a knockout test, but combined with another evaluation tool such as an analysis exercise.

3. Validity and Reliability
VALIDITY
In 2006, Cubiks conducted a construct validity study in order to explore the relationship between PAPI-N and the Trait Descriptive Adjectives (TDA-100) developed by Goldberg (1992), a measure of the Big Five personality factors.

The TDA-100 measure consists of 100 unipolar trait descriptive adjectives and participants have to rate how accurately each descriptor describes themselves on a nine-point scale, where 1 = extremely inaccurate, 5 = neither accurate nor inaccurate and 9 = extremely accurate.

Sample: 65 employees (21 male and 44 female) aged between 20 and 60 from two organizations within the telecommunication and business services sectors took part in the study. Employees’ occupations ranged from management to administrative, office-based positions in London, UK.

Results: According to this research, there’s a number of relationships between PAPI-N and TDA, which suggest that PAPI correlates significantly with the Big Five scales. However, a perfect relationship is not possible considering that PAPI is an assessment of personality in the work context, whereas the TDA is a general personality measure (See Appendix I)

The most significant correlations between scales are:
Conceptual Thinker / Intellect 0.75
X Need to be noticed / Surgency 0.66
C Organized Type / Conscientiousness 0.70

Reliability
It was no possible to found the original document that supports the reliability of PAPI-N English version. Nevertheless, is important to highlight that there is evidence of a study in regards of the psychometric factors of PAPI-N, conducted by Lewis and Anderson in 1998. This study is discussed in the results of a research conducted in 2006, in which the authors commented that internal consistency of the Spanish version of PAPI-N is adequate and similar to that obtained with English version of PAPI-N by Lewis and Anderson –“all 20 scales with alphas exceeding .70, 14 of them with alphas of above .80” - (Sanz et al. 2006).

The 2006 study by Sanz et al analyzed the reliability and factorial validity of the Spanish PAPI-N. Results suggested that the factorial validity of the Spanish version is consistent across samples and similar to that found in the Personality Research Form, a well-validated measure of Murray’s needs.

Sample: participants were 420 job applicants in a variety of sectors of the economy. The sample comprised 239 women and 181 men (age range = 20-50 years; age mean = 25.1), and most of them (87.6%) held university qualifications.

Results: Internal consistency reliability of twelve PAPI-N scales (G, L, I, T, D, C, E, N, P, X, B, F) is higher than .80, and for the remaining PAPI-N scales (H, S, A, O, Z, and W) is higher than the standard of .70, with two exceptions: R (.66) was close to the standard, but K was low (.41). (See Appendix II)

Overall, PAPI-N shows adequate coefficients of validity and reliability compared to well-known test such as Personality Research Form and TDA-100. Due to these facts, PAPI-N is a solid and reliable tool for the purpose of evaluate and compare different candidates.

4. Would support its continued use by the employer?
PAPI-N is an assessment tool that provides significant benefits for both employers and candidates: * Is founded on a solid theoretical base * Comprehensively covers aspects of personality relevant to the workplace * Is simple to administer, complete and score * Avoids clinical terminology and interpretation * Several researches and studies support its high coefficients of validity and reliability. * Provide results fast and accurately
Another good point regarding good practices is that the employer uses PAPI-N with other assessment tools, in order to obtain more accurate imputs that can provide high quality information for the decision making process.
On the benefit of the candidate, PAPI-N is a user-friendly application that can be accessed online, anywhere at any time, which is an advantage for those candidates with limited availability to attend future employer’s premises at specific times (foreign candidates, those who are currently working, etc.)
Considering all the benefits provided by PAPI-N, I would recommend that the employer should keep using this test as one of its assessment tools.

APPENDIX

Table 2. Correlations between PAPI and the TDA-100 (N=65)

Figure 1. Example of a Job Profiler report

Figure 2. Example of a Wheel Report with a description of the factors

REFERENCES

Cubiks (20). Cubiks assessment reliability and validity series V06.14. Self-assessment of needs and behaviour patterns at work: the psychometric properties of the Personality and Preference Inventory - Normative (PAPI-N™) Retrieved from http://www.cubiks.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/Files%20ENG/Validity%20Studies%20ENG/Validity%20study%20relating%20to%20the%20Spanish%20version%20of%20PAPI-N.pdf Cubiks (2006) Cubiks assessment reliability and validity series V06.14. Investigating the relationship between PAPI-N™ the lexical Big Five personality factors. Retrieved from

Cubiks (2013) Corporate Website. Retrieved from http://www.cubiks.com/PRODUCTS/PERSONALITYASSESSMENTS/Pages/papi.aspx

Psychology.about.com (2013) Theories of Personality. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/psychogenic.htm

The British Psychological Society (2013). Search Test and Results. http://www.psychtesting.org.uk/test-registration-and-test-reviews/test-reviews.cfm?Test_ID=60&page=summary

Table 1. Correlations between PAPI and the TDA-100 (N=65). Adapted from “Cubiks assessment reliability and validity series V06.14. Investigating the relationship between PAPI-N™ the lexical Big Five personality factors”, by Cubiks, 2006, p.3. Copyright 2006 by Cubiks.

Table 2. Factor Analyses of the PAPI-N Scales. Adapted from “Cubiks assessment reliability and validity series V06.14. Self-assessment of needs and behaviour patterns at work: the psychometric properties of the Personality and Preference Inventory - Normative (PAPI-N™)” by Cubiks, 2006, p. 5. Copyright 2006 by Cubiks.

Figure 1. Example of a Job Profiler Report. Adapted from Merit Solutions Psychometric Assessments. 2013. Retrieved from http://www.meritsolutions.com.au/recruitment-selection/psychometric-assessment-2/psychometric-papi/

Figure 2. Example of a Wheel Report with a description of the factors. Adapted from Merit Solutions. PAPI – Psychometric Testing Services. 2013. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioo5JalXEJ0