OPTO – GOING FROM GREAT TO EXCELLENT!
We are proud to present an updated version of our personality test, OPTO, and we are very eager to release the next generation of OPTO. The development of solutions is imperative to maintaining high quality, great user experience, and excellent HR tools, that Master is known for.
The OPTO project started some years ago with a defined set of goals, and these goals are still the guidance in the update and revision carried out, here 3 years after OPTO was first released, with a special high focus on the two first goals.
Maintaing the high quality
One of the expertise at Master International, is working with the core elements of our solutions. Including maintaining and finetuning the questions (items), the report texts, and the algorithms behind OPTO. When OPTO was developed and released it was created as a great tool to assess candidates in a recruitment process, and we had so many dreams and wishes, that was included in the first version. Now the solution is more mature, and we have the data to take the next step. 
It is currently available in Danish, English (UK), Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish. In 2019 OPTO was taken by thousands of candidates globally. So, it was the time to prioritize the fine tuning of the test.
When we maintain a solution, the primary purpose is to maintain high quality. Our focus is to always secure high quality HR tools.
There is a close link between the design of OPTO and the business use of OPTO. Our items are work-related, and our reports are highly relevant in a work-related context. However, we have for quite some time wanted to link them even closer, by using work-related data to evaluate our test. And to do so, we made an item review based on work-related data, or what we also categorise as high-stake data.
Work-related data
When we develop new solutions, naturally we cannot test the solution in a real market before it is developed. This dilemma is dealt with by using data, that is gathered by offering the test for free or by paying to gather data. Of course, this is essential for developing the solution, but it has its disadvantages. Now we have gathered data from actual recruitment processes and are therefore able to be more aligned with business and make more accurate measures, as there are smaller deviation, but never the less deviations, in the responses a person gives when completing a questionnaire for fun, or completing a questionnaire because they would like to get a job.
As an example of the different response patterns when asked in different situations. For example, the item: “I am always a trustworthy person” shows different answering patterns in high-stake and low-stake situations. In a recruitment situation, people are more prone to answering very positive to this item, whereas if the questionnaire is completed for fun, there are more diversity in the answers collected. This indicates that we needed to recalibrate the whole psychometrical machinery behind the OPTO with work-related data. To ensure that OPTO, to an even higher degree, captures those small tiny difference that can support a good recruitment process.
Item review
Items are the specific questions that all test takers answer. The quality of a test is mainly a question of how well the items measure what they are supposed to measure and how consistently it measures it.
This can be studied with different psychometrical analysis, showing the correlation between the items, the difference in answering patterns between languages, or comparing to other questionnaires, that measure the same theoretical elements. By developing and testing approximately 40 new items, we have chosen the items that have the better specifications and gave us the best result psychometrically.
By removing, adding, or changing items we have ensured the following:
- Higher alignment across languages, eliminating small differences in the way we might understand each item in different languages
- Closer link between items and the theoretical components we are measuring, by choosing items, that have wordings closer to the definitions of the Aspects and Dimensions of OPTO
Value of changes
The result is an improved solution, that is now even more calibrated to today’s market, and optimized for the selection and recruitment of the modern employee.
All in all, users will experience a solution, that now has a higher precision of measurement with items, that have a higher correlation, easier for us to translate in the future, and with an even clearer focus on what we are measuring. All analyses are based on high-stake data, which increased the validity and predictive value of the tool and is therefore even closer linked to business. This means that you can expect to have even more candidates who have a good experience using the test, even higher quality in the reports, and you can trust, that we continuously focus on develop OPTO towards the changes in our society.
