Courtesy of her grandfather on her mother’s side, No. 1 Daughter took the aptitude tests offered by the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation. We accompanied her to New York City this past weekend to discuss the results. I’ve not done any research in the area, but my opinion, having suffered other aptitude and personality tests, and the daily horoscope, is that they have some usefulness as descriptive tools, but little to offer in the way of prescription. Since they intend to sample her aptitudes every five years, I’m intrigued about what, if anything, this will show.
Imagine my total lack of surprise then when they confirmed what I already thought: she’s just like her father.
Or, as they put it, a diagnostic generalist.
She scored in the 70th percentile on the inductive reasoning test, and in the 99th percentile on the foresight and analytical reasoning tests. They group personalities by word association and call her “objective.” There are longer descriptions of each aptitude in their book.
We believe that those who [score high on Analytical Reasoning] are “born organizers” who tend to enjoy the process of shuffling concepts into place, classifying data, and creating systems.
A high score on our Inductive Reasoning test suggests that you have the ability to think diagnostically, rapidly evaluate situation or data, and quickly solve problems.
Scoring Objective on our Word Association test suggests that you would tend to prefer working with and through others to accomplish a variety of tasks. …[And] tend to be generalists who like to be involved with multiple aspects of a project, assignment, or team.
It was an annoyance when one of my sisters had everyone take the Enneagram a couple of decades ago, but I can understand the impulse: I wonder how the tests would describe the rest of my family. We do all insist that there’s a correct way to load the dishwasher.