Our clients often want to know about the best time of day for candidates to complete ability tests (and by implication, whether time of day and ability assessment results will be related).
One of our psychometric assessment test distributor Top Talent Solutions recently done some interesting research on the ideal time to complete assessments.
Certain test publishers have even made recommendations regarding when the best times might be to complete their measures. For instance, aptitude and cognitive assessments are sometimes believed to be best completed in the morning, when, presumably, candidates are well rested.
While guidelines such as those published by the Institute of Psychometric Coaching suggest that candidates are “well rested” before completing such assessments, they do not make reference to a specific time of day.
So, is there a better time of day to complete ability assessments? Our research team investigated a massive database of assessment results to find out.
The study
In our research, we wanted to address the following 3 questions:
- Are ability scores different between candidates who completed their assessments in the morning compared to those who completed in the afternoon?
- Are ability scores different between candidates who completed their assessments during working hours versus those who completed them outside of working hours?
- Combining (1) and (2) above, were ability performances affected by morning, afternoon, and working hours completion when viewed together?
More than half (N = 10 475) of our candidates completed their ability tests in the morning (6 am to 12 pm), while the remainder (N = 8 831) completed their assessments in the afternoon (12 pm – 10 pm).
To answer these questions, we used three years’ worth of assessment data from three commonly used ability tests:
- Verbal reasoning
- Numerical reasoning
- Deductive-Logical reasoning
Final thoughts
Contrary to the common belief that candidates should complete assessments earlier in the morning, our research findings suggest that later, after working hours (5pm – 10 pm) completion might be more conducive to better performance.
This finding still needs to be viewed with caution, mainly due to the small effect size observed.
In addition, we weren’t able to control for every conceivable intervening influence other than the time of day on ability assessment results, so there may well be alternative explanations for this effect.
But perhaps the most interesting result is the general absence of time-of-day effects across our samples. Therefore, the best practice course of action might be to continue advising candidates to be well rested or prepared for their assessments, but not to prescribe a specific time of day for completion.
Click on the below link to access the full article below.
