Frequently asked questions

In 2011 the British Psychological Society updated the previous Level A course and renamed it Test User Ability – Occupational. Real Training was one of the first companies to offer the revised course, which includes a greater focus on practical skills related to test use and issues such as fairness and legal aspects of testing. However, overall the Test User Ability course is very similar to Level A.

This course is intended for anyone who wants to make use of tests of ability or aptitude in organisational settings. Test User Ability – Occupational is the ‘industry standard’ course in occupational assessment, and is widely used by people in areas such as HR, consultancy, training, careers guidance and people management – anywhere where understanding people’s ability and potential is important.

You do not need any particular qualifications before joining this course. People who do this course come from a wide range of backgrounds and bring to the course very varied work and life experiences. This course does involve some mathematics so some experience of working with numbers will be useful, though all calculations are fully explained during the course. Finally you will be asked to write some reports. We will provide some example reports but your reports will need to be in your own words. Therefore you will be expected to be able to use a word processor to produce well presented short pieces of writing.

If you are doing the course online you will need access to the internet. The course contents are provided in a high quality printed course manual so you will only need to access the internet at certain points during your study, though we encourage you to use the internet to share the learning process with your fellow delegates.

Most people taking the online course complete it in around 6 months, assuming they can devote around 2 to 3 hours a week to it. The intensive route is shorter because it is focused around the 2-day face-to-face delivery period, though there is some pre-course work and delegates will be required to complete two reports after the face-to-face part of the course. Most people take about 3 months via this route.

Your competence is assessed throughout the course. Each of the course units has key competence tasks associated with them which have to be completed to a satisfactory standard. The nature of the assessment depends on the content of the unit, but includes multiple-choice and short answer questions, written reports and case studies. All course delegates also have to demonstrate competence in test administration, scoring and feedback through practical activities that will be directly observed by course tutors. For delegates completing the distance learning course, we increasingly use technologies such as Skype to assess practical work. For delegates on the intensive course, assessment of practical skills is embedded in the contact part of the course.

After successfully completing the course you will have access to over 150 tests of ability and aptitude from the UK’s leading publishers. You will also have access to many questionnaires assessing vocational interests, as access to these is also covered by the Test User Ability – Occupational course. Access arrangement do however vary between publishers, so if you are interested in using a specific test please contact the publishers to check their requirements for accessing the test.

Test User Occupational – Ability does not specifically focus on personality assessment, though it does cover the psychometric principles that underpin personality tests. Test User Occupational – Personality qualifications cover personality assessments. Most publishers require that delegates complete specific training in personality questionnaires in order to access these, and the BPS sees Test User Occupational – Ability as giving delegates the foundation knowledge of psychometrics necessary to study for the personality qualifications. If you are interested in accessing a specific personality assessment, we recommend that you contact the publishers to check their access requirements.

On successful completion of the course your assessor will sign you off with the British Psychological Society. The Society will then contact you and invite you to join the Register of Qualifications in Test Use (RQTU). Membership of the Register is not a requirement, but Real Training works closely with the British Psychological Society and supports the processes they have in place to uphold standards in test use. When the British Psychological Society invites you to join the RQTU, you have 12 months to do this. After this 12 months, the Society no longer considers your affirmation of competence to be current, and you will need to seek reassessment. A fee is payable to join the RQTU (in addition to the course fee). Further details about the RQTU can be found here.

Please contact us with your requirements. We will do what we can in order to make our materials accessible to you.

This course is intended for anyone who wants to administer and score psychometric tests in organisational settings. It covers all types of psychometric test including tests of ability, aptitude and personality, and is particularly useful for those working in organisations who conduct large volumes of testing. Assistant Test Users work under the guidance of colleagues qualified at Test User level, as the Assistant Test User course does not qualify delegates to select appropriate tests or interpret test results.

You do not need any particular qualifications before joining this course. People who do this course come from a wide range of backgrounds and bring to the course very varied work and life experiences. This course covers some background to psychometrics (though no mathematics is involved!) but is mainly focused on practical skills around planning and conducting test administration and test scoring.

The Assistant Test User course is highly practical and for a significant part of the 1-day course you will be involved in preparing for and conducting test administration and scoring tests. For these reasons the course requires face-to-face contact with the course tutor and for you to work with fellow delegates.

All of the elements necessary for the Assistant Test User course are covered in the day, so providing you have demonstrated sufficient competence during the day no further work is required.

Assessment for the Assistant Test User qualification takes place throughout the day. The majority of the competencies for this course are assessed through observation of your practical work by the course tutor, though there is also a short written assessment that covers your understanding of the knowledge-based aspects of the course.

The Assistant Test User course does not allow delegates to purchase test materials as this needs to be done by people with the Test User level qualifications.

On successful completion of the course your assessor will sign you off with the British Psychological Society. The Society will then contact you and invite you to join the Register of Qualifications in Test Use (RQTU). Membership of the Register is not a requirement, but Real Training works closely with the British Psychological Society and supports the processes they have in place to uphold standards in test use. When the British Psychological Society invites you to join the RQTU, you have 12 months to do this. After this 12 months, the Society no longer considers your affirmation of competence to be current, and you will need to seek reassessment. A fee is payable to join the RQTU (in addition to the course fee). Further details about the RQTU can be found here.

Please contact us with your requirements. We will do what we can in order to make our materials accessible to you.