Background to the Research

• Psychometric tests continue to form an important part of careers guidance for young people of leaving school age throughout the United Kingdom. In the existing literature, there is little evidence about the impact of testing on subsequent labour market success.
• This paper presents a quantitative analysis of the effect of testing in NI on young people's subsequent experiences of unemployment and long-term unemployment between the ages of 16 and 18.
  

Research Approach

• The microecomomic data used in the analysis were taken from a sample survey of 1,492 young people in NI who became eligible to leave school for the first time in 1993. The original survey, referred to as 'Status O Survey', was conducted in 1995 as part of a major research project into unemployment and inactivity amongst teenagers in NI.
• The survey was conducted by means of face-to face interviews and the target sample was disproportionately stratified in such a way that relatively high sampling fractions were applied to young people who left full-time education at the first opportunity, particularly those who entered unemployment/inactivity.
• Two main kinds of information were collected on the young people: firstly, detailed information on their educational and economic activities over the period 1993 and the summer of 1995. Secondly, detailed information was collected on the individual, household and background characteristics of the young people such as, for example, gender, religion, parent's employment status and the last school attended.
• The basic information used to construct the sample for the original Status O Survey was provided by careers officers in each of the 31 local Training and Employment Agency Offices. As part of the research into the effects of psychometric testing, each of the local offices were contacted again in February 1996 and asked to provide further information on the incidence of psychometric testing, relating to each of the 980 young people who were in the original survey.
  

Main Findings

• Girls and Catholics are generally less likely to sit the psychometric tests than their male and non-Catholic counterparts, with the lowest incidence of testing being amongst Catholic girls.
• Young people from schools which have a relatively good overall examination performance amongst 5th form pupils are less likely to sit the tests.
• Young people from schools with good attendance records are slightly more likely than their counterparts to sit the tests.
• Young people who attended schools in the Belfast area are significantly less likely to sit the test than their counterparts from other areas.
• Young people who attained middle ranking qualifications were more likely to sit the psychometric tests than their counterparts.
• Young people who sat psychometric tests generally experienced less unemployment than those who did not sit the tests.

Conclusions

• The results suggest that although testing is not having an adverse impact, it is not having a statistically significant positive effect. Although there maybe a range of explanations for this, the evidence suggests that it might be attributed to some aspects of test administration in NI, such as blanket testing and feedback on test results, which may in many cases fall short of recommended guidelines.