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Research
The Highlands Ability BatteryTM satisfies both principal standards for an effective and dependable test - reliability and validity.
Reliability is the degree to which a test will remain consistent in its results from use to use over a period of time. Reliability anticipates that the score for any individual is the 'true' score for that individual, i.e., that the score for any one individual will be repeated if the individual retakes the test.
Because each of the worksamples composing the Battery tests a different ability, each worksample must satisfy the requirement of reliability independently of the other worksamples.
A study of the Battery showed a reliability range for the individual worksamples of .83 to .95. The study involved 298 participants, ranging in age from 15 to 66 and consisting of 146 males and 152 females. Of the adults over the age of 25, almost all were college graduates. Most of the participants who were younger than 25 were either college students or former college students. See, Summary of Completed Research, page 8, Research Proposal, The Highlands Ability Battery, 1994, C.L. Holland, Ph.D. Also, A Report On The Statistical Characteristics of the Highlands Ability Battery, 2002, The Chauncey Group (ETS).
Validity is a measure of the certainty or confidence with which we can ascribe a contextual significance to a score on a test by a given person. In simple terms, the test should measure what it claims to measure - in this case, human abilities. A test of abilities has validity if it demonstrates an association between test scores and the identification of a particular ability. Each worksample of the Battery must satisfy this test.
Validity can be measured in a variety of ways for tests similar to the Highlands Ability BatteryTM. Validity research has been an ongoing function of the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation, forerunner of the Highlands Battery, for over 50 years and of The Highlands Company since its inception in the early 1990s. All together, hundreds of studies have demonstrated the essential validity of the individual worksamples composing the Highlands Ability BatteryTM. Many of the individual components in other assessment tools are similar in construction to related worksamples in the Highlands Battery, and it is possible to draw parallel validity results by measuring one instrument against another. See, A Report On The Organization, Function, Reliablity & Validity of The Highlands Ability Battery, 2007, Dr. Thomas N. Tavantzis
The study of norms conducted in 2002 by the Chauncey group, an ETS affiliate, supra, confirmed that the norms assigned by Highlands to scores on the Ability Battery were essentially replicated over 4,307 individual test records. The Battery was the subject of a review in January, 2009, by Professor Manivong Ratts in A Counselor's Guide to Career Assessment Instruments, a publication of the National Career Development Association.
Over the years, more than 14,000 individuals have experienced one or another version of the Highlands Ability BatteryTM. In a recent survey, a class of graduate students at Colorado State University ranked the Highlands Ability BatteryTM #1 in effectiveness in measuring abilities. The Battery was measured against three other assessments which are widely used. See, A History of the Highlands Ability Battery (tHAB), 2007, Lazar Emanuel.
