Brief Overview

The Adjective Advantage

Adjectives are used instead of the long sentences that most other tests use, for two important reasons.

1) Single adjectives such as the word "responsible" are easily understood and can be responded to quickly. Using adjectives allows the Survey to have BOTH a very reliable data base (720 responses) AND a very low average completion time (just 30 minutes)!

2) Second, checking adjectives rather quickly gives the subject less ability to control how their results look, yielding a more honest response, more often.

Two Tests in One

Instead of merely letting the subject say how he sees himself, the Survey balances this information against the person's perception of how others see him. This method of using the perception of "others" is a proven interviewing technique.

For instance, if in an interview a manager is asked, "how considerate are you of your workers?” he will usually say, "I am very considerate". He may even be able to give you a few examples of times when he has been considerate.

However, when asked "how considerate do your workers think you are?” we often get a quite different answer. They may say, "they think I am too harsh". When asked, "why do these workers feel you are harsh?” we begin to see examples of harshness, often to the surprise of the interviewee.

Character tests that leave out this "other" information cannot possibly achieve the accuracy of the Personal Survey, since they rely solely upon the person's "self-concept", which is only half of the picture, at best.

The Survey Measures the Variations that Real People Have

Most people are not the same way all the time. They do not feel the same way all the time. They do not behave the same way all the time. And, their feelings can be quite opposite to their behavior . To accurately report on what people are like, a test must measure and describe this variability. Very few tests do.

The Simmons Personal Survey shows: 1 ) how the person really feels, wants to behave, and will behave if not under pressure from others, shown by an "S", 2 ) how they may present themselves to others (whether honest, or a facade) "O", 3 ) how they will tend to actually perform - shown by a bar, 4 ) the variation in self-concept, 5 ) the variation in behavior before others, 6 ) the variation in actual performance, 7 ) how the person probably has been in the past, 8 ) how they are now, and 9 ) what they are becoming!

We know of no other test that shows this full, realistic range of human character. Most other tests grossly over-simplify human character by giving the person a single score per trait, or worse yet, showing them as a cookie-cut "type" of person, made up of several static single scores. This limited view of human character automatically results in inaccuracy and lack of depth in predicting performance.