Our review of the literature provides strong confirmation that companies’ use of
psychological tests has been growing over time. Up to the mid-1980s surveys of test usage,
and indeed of recruitment and selection methods more generally, were apt to point to little
change. Sneath et al, reporting in 1976, concluded that there was no indication that test usage
had increased since the 1960s or early 1970s, ‘and possibly test usage may even have
declined’. Gill, writing in 1980 on management selection, reported ‘a high degree of
satisfaction, at times bordering on complacency, with traditional methods of recruitment and
selection which, as the research indicates, have not changed in any significant way in the past
10 years’. Bevan and Fryatt (1988) noted that testing was not widely practised by UK
employers and that there was scope for greater penetration of tests. Employers were not
unaware of tests, but were unclear about what the tests could do or how useful they actually
were.Growth in test use seems to have taken off at some point in the 1980s. By the late
1980s and early 1990s, researchers were beginning to discern substantial shifts in companies’
selection techniques. Shackleton and Newell (1991), comparing their survey results with
those of Mabey five years previously, reported what they felt was an encouraging trend
towards higher proportions of companies making use of more reliable and valid methods of
selection. Since then surveys have continued to suggest that more organisations have adopted
psychological testing. In the main, it is large organisations which have chosen to use tests.
Psychometric testing is not unknown in smaller organisations, but they tend to be deterred by
the costs of the tests and the low numbers of vacancies which they have.