A number of tests are administered to assess an injured employee’s aptitude, achievement, and interests. CareerScope is a computer administered version of the US Department of Labor’s General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB). CareerScope also incorporates the Department of Labor’s USES Interest Inventory. It then meshes the results of both assessments into a report that is easy for the typical worker to understand. The drawback to this assessment instrument is that it does not measure eye-hand-motor coordination, or finger and manual dexterity (K, F and M).
The Wonderlic Personnel Test is another aptitude test used to assess worker’s aptitudes. The advantage of this test is that it has been adjudicated by the US Supreme Court to be both a reliable and valid measure of aptitude on more than one occasion.
The Career Assessment Inventory-Enhanced Version is a computer administrated interest inventory that covers more occupations than the USES Interest Inventory. As with the CareerScope, it is possible with this instrument to print out the results immediately after completion. The worker is left with a 23 page report (on average) that is informative and usually lists a number of occupations in which they are interested.
Specialized personality testing for certain occupations such as law enforcement and airline pilot, for example, is available using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 as the base instrument. Automated report generation (as in the tests above) is utilized. The MMPI reports are authored by James M. Butcher, Ph.D., a nationally recognized expert on the MMPI.
For those clients who are inappropriate for the aptitude tests above due to lack of education or perhaps a specific learning disability, the Wide Range Achievement Test, version 4 (WRAT4) is available. This test will provide a grade equivalent score and percentile rank and for these reasons is usually reserved for those who are working at an elementary school level in word reading, sentence comprehension, spelling, and math computation.
Vocational testing is valuable as it provides a clue as to the type of retraining would be most beneficial for a client e.g. lock-step classroom, short term on-the-job training, Adult Basic Education, formal multi-year apprenticeship, or a combination of all four.