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Old 01-13-2008, 08:31 AM   #88
richlevy
King Of Wishful Thinking
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Philadelphia Suburbs
Posts: 6,669
Quote:
Originally Posted by lookout123 View Post
That is the old and I still feel the same about the phrasing of certain questions.

Here's the new:
Economic Left/Right: 1.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -0.51
There is a similar personality test used in psychology and career guidance, which does the same thing. It asks vague questions which could be challenged on any number of issues and basically the combination of answers is more important that the reasoning behind the answers.

Example question:

My father was a good man. True False

Depending on if someones father is alive or dead, or if they thought their father was ever a good man, the answer differs depending on how literal they approach the questions. If someone's father is still alive they could put False by objecting to the use of the word 'was'. The test doesn't care specifically about the answer. It combines this with all of the other questions to see if the person is just literal-minded or has an issue with their father. The test works by building a database of similar answers to make assumptions.

I did some Google Research and found this, a section in the book Organization Man on How to Cheat on Personality Tests. If you are doing a test for yourself (career guidance, political compass, etc), then when you cheat you are cheating yourself. The book believes that if you want the job, you should cheat on the test if necessary. I'm not sure I agree with that.
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