How to Assure Assessment Accuracy? Independent & Qualified Testing at Standards Set by the APA and EEOC

“…this DISC assessment has one of the highest Cronbach scores in the DISC marketplace.”
- Assessment Standards Institute

The Assessment Industry’s Past and Present
Assessments have been used since the mid-20th century, initially relied upon by Fortune 500s, calculated by highly skilled PhDs and produced by only a handful of trusted developers. With the advent of the internet in the 1990s, the ability to produce, market, and sell assessments became exponentially easier and less expensive. Since then, it has developed into a kind of “global cottage industry” with hundreds of new assessment developers, producing thousands of different assessments. Each developer purporting its assessments to be scientifically accurate instruments - sold, resold and used by individuals and organizations of all kinds; including many of our largest institutions like Fortune 500s, major universities, world governments, and even military. Frighteningly, this “global cottage industry,” which produces data relied upon by millions, is entirely unregulated with nothing to ensure its consumers are receiving what they are being told and sold. There are zero requirements, safeguards, laws or regulations ensuring the consumer receives a scientifically accurate instrument - or even what the developers and sellers claim.

The Solution? Independent & Verifiable Testing by a Qualified Institution
The Assessment Standards Institute (ASI) provides our assessments with verifiably objective testing and reporting that meet standards set by the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). This battery of tests is both voluntary and verifiably transparent. Our goal? To ensure this assessment’s professional merit and scientific accuracy for you, the user. These reports are readily available upon request and include:

Construct Validity (APA Standards)
Construct validity is one of the most central concepts in psychology. It is the degree to which a test measures what it claims, or purports to be measuring. Researchers generally establish the construct validity of a measure by correlating it with a number of other measures and arguing from the pattern of correlations that the measure is associated with these variables in theoretically predictable ways.

Reliability - Cronbach’s alpha (APA Standards)
This technique is regarded as one of the most robust measures of reliability and presents the highest 'bar' from which to compare. The readers should note that Cronbach's alpha is the method selected for this instrument, because of its high standards. The reader is encouraged to compare reliability coefficients presented herein to other vendors, and also to ask those vendors which reliability formulas they used to compute their reliability coefficients. Cronbach’s alpha is a measure used to assess the reliability, or internal consistency, of a set of scale or test items. In other words, the reliability of any given measurement refers to the extent to which it is a consistent measure of a concept, and Cronbach’s alpha is one way of measuring the strength of that consistency.

Disparate Impact (EEOC Guidelines)
Employers often use tests and other selection procedures to screen applicants for hire and employees for promotion. The use of tests and other selection procedures can be a very effective means of determining which applicants or employees are most qualified for a job. However, use of these tools can also violate the EEOC Guidelines if they disproportionately exclude people in a protected group by class, race, sex, or another covered basis. Importantly, the law does allow for selection procedures to select the best candidates based on job related requirements. If the selection procedure has a disparate impact based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, the employer is required to show that the selection procedure is job related and consistent with business necessity. If discrimination exists, the challenged policy or practice should therefore be associated with the skills needed to perform the job successfully.