Thursday 24th November 2022

Taking Bob Dylan’s 1964 advice “…and keep your eyes wide, the chance won’t come again” we had a great response to our invitation for the annual New Frontiers in Psychometrics Seminar.  We were delighted to be able to offer our attendees an impressive line up of speakers – nine in all and we were hugely grateful to all of them for being able to provide us with excellent summaries of what were usually much longer presentations, giving a taster of their topics and leaving us wanting more.

Expertly chaired by our TPF Chair Tameron Chappell, we started with a look at how our psychometric past influences our present and then explored some of the varied ways our profession is developing.  Dr Hugh McCredie was our psychometric historian guide followed by Ben Williams providing his informative overviews of how AI is being used in people decisions. Peter Burnham shared insights on the application and reach of People Analytics and Marcus Gee explained how Organisational Network Analysis (ONA) is changing the way we can look at the interactions between people in an organisation and see beyond the traditional personality questionnaire.

We also heard from a range of practitioners who are working hard to update and adapt our more traditional assessment and development approaches and make sure our tools are relevant for our changing context. Martin Kavanagh shared an innovative way to approach large volume assessment, Steve Willshaw introduced TIFF, a framework from Transactional Analysis which focuses on self-awareness and behaviour change, Jason Lang was joined by Clare Mottram to talk to us about enhancing the psychometric assessment experience for neurodiverse participants and Dr Rainer Kurz shared the latest developments and his thinking on the Great 8 competencies.  We had brief opportunities for discussion and it was  agreed that these topics should be revisited in more detail.