Beginning May 5
Mon & Thur
3pm-5pm EST
May 7 training will be held on May 27th
Beginning June 6
Tues & Fri
3pm - 5pm EST
Research
We look for two principal qualities in a test – reliability and validity.
Both qualities as applied to the Highlands Ability Battery were measured most recently in A Report on the Organization, Function, Reliability and Validity of the Highlands Ability Battery (tHAB), by Dr. Thomas N. Tavantzis, Director, Organizational Psychology and Leadership Program, Graduate Division of Education, Saint Joseph’s University. To read Dr. Tavantzis’
full report, click here
Reliability means that the score for any person is the 'true' score for that person, i.e., that the score is essentially free of extraneous influences. Reliability is demonstrated by the essential similarity of a person's scores on different administrations of the same test (test/retest). Reliability estimates are typically reported on a range of 0.0 to 1.0, with 1.0 being perfect. 0.7 is generally held to be the minimum acceptable reliability measure for tests similar to the Highlands Ability Battery.
Because the worksamples composing the battery are quite different in form and format from each other, as well as different in the range of behavior being examined and the type of response required, each worksample must be separately measured for reliability. The most recent estimates of reliability for the Highlands Ability Battery were obtained by Highlands in a large-sample study which showed a reliability range for the individual worksamples of .83 to .95.
The study, conducted in 1994, involved 298 participants drawn from regular clients ranging in age from 15 to 66. There were 146 males and 152 females. Of the adults over the age of 25, almost all were college graduates. Most of the participants who were younger than 25 were either college students or former college students.
Validity is the certainty with which we can ascribe a contextual significance to a given score on a given test with a given person, i.e., the confidence with which we can interpret any given test result. In simple terms, the test should measure what it claims to measure.
Validity can be estimated in a variety of ways for tests of abilities similar to the Highlands Ability Battery. Validity research has been an ongoing function of the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation, forerunner of the Highlands Battery, for over 50 years and of The Highlands Company since its inception in the early 1990s. All together, hundreds of studies have demonstrated the essential validity of the individual worksamples composing the Highlands Ability Battery. Many of the individual components in assessments administered by other companies and laboratories are similar in construction to related worksamples in the Highlands Battery, and it is possible to draw parallel results by measuring one instrument against another. Because of the similarities in the structure of these other assessments, it is also possible to relate the overall findings among them.
A study conducted by the Chauncey group, an ETS affiliate in 2002 confirmed that the norms assigned by Highlands to the Ability Battery were essentially replicated over 4,307 individual test records.
Over the years, more than 12,000 individuals have experienced either the Paper and Pencil version or the CD version of the Highlands Ability Battery. In a recent survey, a class of graduate students at Colorado State University ranked the Highlands Ability Battery #1 in effectiveness in measuring abilities. The Battery was measured against three other assessments which are widely used.
