Validity

Highly accurate - specifically designed to assess behavior on the job

The next generation of assessment tools

Dr. Yeager specifically developed the Sommer Survey to measure behavior and performance on the job. He is a licensed psychologist, has a background in survey design, and is an expert in linguistic structures. To design the Sommer Survey, we used the same research approach that advanced the aerospace and engineering industry.

 

The Sommer Survey represents a game changing technology for assessment strategies in business. The impact is equivalent to the progress of the smart phone over the conventional rotary dial phone of decades past.

 

This narrative illustrates how the Sommer Survey’s validity and its state of the art technology represent the gains found in modern test and measurement technology.

That is, the Sommer Survey is compared against customary inferential and theoretical test development strategies. Hundred year-old item-analysis methodologies are widely used in selection and development. Item analysis methods offer a sharp contrast in comparison to the more robust Sommer Survey as a representative of the technology used in applied experimental prototyping strategies.

The two strategies demonstrate major differences in the assessor’s control over the assessment process and its outcomes. The researchers control within item analysis practices can be compared to the unpredictable journeys of a hot air balloon. Flying in hot air balloons is a process of estimation, not precision control. In contrast, experimental prototyping strategies can be compared to the precision flight controls of modern jet aircraft.

In a balloon’s flight, as with common item analysis strategies, you know where you’ve been, but you don’t know quite where you are going with your correlations. You have no control over the trip and no control over how you will land. And you can’t go back the way you came. In the long run, tests and measurement practices seek the scientific control found in competing hard sciences such as found in aerospace professions.

In general, many popular test development processes offer the developer and assessor little real control over the journey to the desired destination. Typical statements found in the conclusion sections of professional literature, usually offer us “careful interpretations” and “suggestions for further research”. Simply put, customary test development procedures offer only equivocal promises. In reality, few certainties occur with soft correlation strategies compared to prototyping methods.

 

The Sommer Survey represents the next generation and new breed of assessment tools.

Through a thoroughly researched and battle-tested methodology, it uses the only known method to uncover both the conscious and unconscious components of thinking and decision strategies – deep linguistic analysis.

 

The result is highly relevant, predictable and provides actionable insights that were previously not possible. It provides direct linkage to performance prescriptions that leverage performance on-the-job. This direct cause and effect relationship between language structures and behavior ensures accurate and valid measurement mechanisms.

 

A complete 50+ page validity document is available on request.