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Fact Sheet Adaptive Agile Mindset Assessment

Description

The Agile Mindset Assessment Adaptive is a test programme that provides insight into the candidate's ability to change in the workplace, based on their personality and career values. The aim of this test programme is to paint a picture of the candidate's ability to change, also known as Agility, and the main pillars that are at the base of it.

The Adaptive Agile Mindset Assessment consists of a combination the following tests:

- Adaptive Work-related Personality Inventory (AWPI)
The AWPI is a validated and reliable adaptive questionnaire that reflects a personality profile. This profile is drawn up from a comparison of the scores obtained on the personality factors and scales with the norm group. The norm group is representative of the Dutch working population (see the WPI manual for more information).

- Adaptive Career Values Inventory (ACI)
The valid and reliable Adaptive Career Values ​​Questionnaire (ACV) provides insight into someone's drive or motivators for work. The norm group is representative of the Dutch working population (see the CV manual for more information).

An adaptive questionnaire is one in which not every candidate will receive exactly the same list of questions. Only the questions that would provide additional information about the candidate's work values or personality are asked. Which questions are asked depends on the answers that the candidate has already given to questions previously asked. In practice, this means that almost every candidate will receive a different questionnaire.

Report

The report is structured as follows:

Introduction
The report starts by explaining what an Agile mindset means exactly, and what Agile working is all about. It explains that people differ in their degree of change capacity, and in their enthusiasm when embracing change. From a high to low, the possible forms of an agile mindset are respectively: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards.

Agile mindset
The second part concerns the candidate's personal result. Based on the candidate's personality and career values, he or she will be assigned to one of the five possible forms of an Agile mindset above. In addition to the graphical representation, the candidate's agile mindset and the role it plays in his/her attitude to work and working in teams will be elaborated on.

Pillars
The type of Agile mindset is based on three pillars: Power, Change and Growth. Power describes the extent to which the candidate has the energy to deal with change. Change reflects the extent to which the candidate embraces change. Growth reflects the extent to which the candidate wants to continue to grow. The third part of the report describes the candidate's score on each of these pillars, and graphically shows which personality trait the pillar is based on. The candidate also gets tips for each pillar, so he or she can learn to handle change even better.

Purpose

The purpose of this test program, as mentioned above, is to paint a picture of the candidate's ability to change, also known as Agility, and the main pillars this is based upon. Every organisation benefits from a variety of change capacity; the chance of a successful project is greater with a team that consists of both people with a lot of change capacity and people with little change capacity (Yilmaz, O'Connor, Colomo-Palacios, & Clarke, 2017). Each degree of change capacity brings its own qualities and challenges (Robinson, 2009). Self-insight into change capacity can therefore be used to get more out of people's qualities on the one hand, and to work on areas of improvement on the other. Moreover, the amount of change capacity indicates to what extent someone fits into a more conservative or progressive organisation.

Application

The Adaptive Agile Mindset Assessment can be used in any situation where it is important to learn more about a person's capacity to change, both in selection as well as advice situations. The assessment illustrates how a person copes with change. This allows the candidate to gain insight into their qualities, what kind of company suits them, and areas of improvement related to change capacity. In addition, it gives the (potential) employer guidelines with regards to the candidate's position in a team. In this way, a more targeted search for a position that matches one's motivations can be conducted.

Development

Candidates' ability to deal with change depends on their personality and career values, so it is, therefore, important to map these. For this assessment, a weighted composition of the Adaptive Work-related Personality Inventory (AWPI) scales was used in combination with the Adaptive Career Values Inventory (ACI).

The Agile mindset types that are reported on, are based on the Diffusion of Innovations model, developed by Evert Rogers in 1965 (Dearing, 2009). This model describes how innovations are picked up in a population (Robinson, 2009) and explains where and when a new idea or technology is accepted. (Vishwanath, 2005). This acceptance depends on the attitude towards the innovation as well as the personality of the person involved. Researchers of the Diffusion model argue that the population should be split into five segments, depending on their attitude toward change. These are: Innovators, Early adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards.

Adaptive Work-related Personality Inventory
The questionnaire is based on the 'Big Five' personality theory and contains the same items as the thoroughly validated and by COTAN positively assessed Work-related Personality Inventory (also see the manual of the WPI). Unlike the traditional WPI, the AWPI is an adaptive questionnaire.

Adaptieve Career Values Inventory
The ACI is based on several theoretical models, such as Schwartz's values ​​(1999), Schein's career anchors (1993) and Maslow's pyramid of needs (1943). The ACI contains the same items as the thoroughly validated and COTAN assessed Career Values ​​N (also see the manual of the CV-N). The quality of these items has been researched extensively, meaning we can guarantee it. Unlike the traditional CV-N, the ACI is an adaptive questionnaire.

Adaptive testing
When developing the adaptive questionnaire, we conducted extensive research in order to determine what information each question yielded for different career values. Simply put, out of a large box of questions, the system always selects the question that provides the most information after the previous question. This continues until all scales have been measured accurately enough. On average, this method of questioning already yields enough information after 72 questions to the ACV and 92 questions to the AWPI, to make reliable statements about the personality of the candidate (Read more detailed information about the methodology.) In practice, this means that candidates have a much more pleasant experience when completing the questionnaires. They hardly come across 'duplicate' items asking for the same characteristics and candidates, on average, complete the questionnaire 3 times faster.

Norm group

At the moment, the norm group consists of a representative representation of the Dutch working population. Age categories, gender, origin, work situation and sectors were taken into account in the standardization and validation studies, among other things by ensuring a good spread within research groups to form a representative reflection of the working population (see WPI manual and CV manual for more information).

Reliability and validity

Research shows that the reliability of the AWPI and the ACI are very high: for the AWPI at an average of .87 for the scales and 0.95 for the factors, and for the ACI at an average of 0.87. In addition, analyses show that the results of the ACI and classical CV-N are strongly related. For example, our research shows that the correlations of the AWPI with the full WPI-N, and of the ACI with the full CV-N, are very high (mean r = .92) and that the factor structure of the questionnaires is similar. Based on these high correlations, we can conclude that the AWPI and WPI-N, as well as the ACI and CV-N, are equivalent. These research results support the concept validity and reliability of the AWPI and ACI.