Business Attribute Inventory

The Business Attribute Inventory (BAI) measures the workplace attributes and values needed for strong critical thinking in entry-level business staff roles. BAI provides valid and reliable data for individuals and for groups. The BAI is designed for use in secondary school and undergraduate-level business education programs. Clients most commonly use the BAI for advising and retention, adult re-entry, and adult personal development training programs.
Population: BAI is calibrated for the adult learner (young adult through re-entry senior adult) engaged in business education.
Administration: Administer at any time, in any location with our user-friendly, encrypted, online, multi-lingual interface.
Support Materials: The BAI User Manual includes all needed information about administering the assessment and interpreting the resulting individual and group scores.
Specs: 25 minutes timed administration; 100 engaging, Likert-style agree/disagree items.
Deliverables: Group graphics with statistical summary of scores; Excel spreadsheet of responses to all custom demographic questions, and all scores for each person tested. Optional individual score reports for administrators and/or test takers.
Results Reported with a brief statement of what each metric represents:
- Dependability – Responsibility to co-workers to do one’s part
- Job Commitment – Orientation toward the mission of the workplace
- Honesty – Kept promises and respect for property and policies
- Desire to Work -A sense of pride and self-worth derived from work
- Desire to Learn – Appreciation of continued development and re-tooling
- Desire to Think – The habit of thoughtfully engaging problems
- Workplace Flexibility – Adaptability to changing situations and demands
- Professionalism – Professional approach to social interactions in the workplace
- Workplace Tolerance – Respect for diversity in the workplace
Scoring: The BAI is scored on a 10-40 point scale with a corresponding qualitative rating (Not Manifested, Positive, Strong Positive).
Optional Custom Questions: At no additional cost clients can add up to ten client-specific custom descriptive demographic questions to the assessment profile to enable sub-group reports.
Language: English
License to Administer the BAI: Sold globally exclusively to public and private educational institutions; DOE, NSF, NIH, RWJ, and other grant-funded projects; higher education program evaluation consultants; doctoral dissertation scholars; and other government and agency level entities.
Comprehensive assessment support services are available to not-for-profit educational organizations, government agencies, NGOs, dissertation scholars, and funded research clients.
Starting with an initial consultation to learn about your project, our experienced assessment specialists support your project in multiple ways, all included with your purchase of account setup and assessment use licenses.
- Instrument selection: We help the client find the academic assessment instrument(s) which best fit the educational level and broad subject matter area of the individuals to be assessed.
- Administration strategies: Clients can keep test takers anonymous or use personal identifiers; sampling methods can measure an aggregated group profile without testing everyone.
- Privacy Protection: We assist the client with privacy protection strategies, including, if needed, completely anonymous double-blind assessments.
- Assessment logistics: We help clients assess program applicants onsite or remotely, gather pretest/post-test learning outcomes data, and generate individual or group logins.
- Introducing client-specific custom questions: Clients can enable organizing, managing, and analyzing the assessment data that they plan to collect by introducing up to ten client-designed demographic profile questions. We assist clients with this process.
- Client assessment administration setup: We orient the client to the use of their assessment administration interface by walking them through the processes of creating a testing assignment, including designating the start and end dates and choosing whether to display on-screen assessment results to the individual test-taker.
- Report Generation: We orient clients on the use of the online report generation tool that produces customized group reports, aggregating and disaggregating data by the demographic variables they have collected (e.g., Training group, admission cohort, school, program, or any other custom demographic data that the client may have included).
- 24/7/365 emergency technical support for our client testing administrators.
We demonstrate how easy it is to administer assessments even to very young students using our intuitive, browser-based, multilingual online testing system on almost any device: computer, tablet, or smartphone.
Preview Packs enable future clients to experience the intended assessment tool in exactly the same way it will be used in their planned project. The user manual and two logins are included.
BAI score metrics: Dependability, Job Commitment, Honesty, Desire to Work, Desire to Learn, Desire to Think, Workplace Flexibility, Professionalism, Workplace Tolerance (9 highly valued attributes for a thinking workforce). Items are drawn from a scientifically developed and tested item pool.
- Dependability: The Dependability Scale addresses motivation to complete assigned tasks and take pride in the accomplishment of work assignments. It speaks to the sense of responsibility one feels to coworkers or to do one’s part. Higher scores show a strong work ethic and attention to the demands of an assignment. Dependability is significant when an individual’s absence can have a negative ripple effect on the success of a project or team.
- Job Commitment: The Job Commitment scale differentiates between someone who is more oriented toward the company, its people, and its mission, versus someone whose goals are more self-focused. High scores indicate feelings of loyalty to one’s workplace and its goals and ideals. Low scores indicate that this sense of commitment to the company was not manifested. Commitment to the company can be vital when assignments are essential to the organization, highly detailed, or if the function is repetitive.
- Honesty: The Honesty Scale addresses the inclination to respect other people’s property, follow rules, keep promises, and speak truthfully. Higher scores indicate trustworthiness and appreciation of honesty in communication and behavior. Honesty is very important for placement in higher risk or unsupervised positions.
- Desire to Work: The Desire to Work Scale addresses eagerness to work and one’s sense of pride and self-worth derived from working. Strong desire to work is a positive reference to potential employment longevity. Higher scores indicate someone who tends to focus their energy on their work and to define themselves by the work they do. One’s desire to work speaks broadly to one’s own expected level of engagement and productivity.
- Desire to Learn: The Desire to Learn Scale addresses the appreciation of continuous development and the need to retool in light of changing work responsibilities. As the workplace grows or changes, one can either aid in the transition or resist the personal impact of change, which inhibits institutional benefit. Higher scores indicate someone who is eager to learn new processes, new systems and new procedures. A willingness to learn is essential for positions where specific knowledge must be gained on the job.
- Desire to Think: The Desire to Think Scale addresses the thoughtful engagement of problems. The desire to think is valued by businesses that expect all employees to contribute constructively to the resolution of customer and workplace problems. Higher scores indicate that someone sees the value of thinking things through before making decisions, which is particularly essential in roles in which one is responsible for managing change, product development or competitive threat.
- Workplace Flexibility: The Workplace Flexibility Scale addresses adaptability to changing workplace situations and demands. Reaching solutions demands openness and willingness to adjust expectations. Higher scores on this scale indicate someone who is resilient and welcoming toward workplace requirements for change and for the application of new or different skills. Flexibility is highly valued in fast-paced or fluid environments.
- Professionalism: This scale addresses the approach to social interactions in the workplace. Higher scores indicate the tendency to limit socializing to that which is necessary to get the job done and to take an appropriate and professional approach to social interactions at work. Professionalism is vital to maintaining a proper focus on work responsibilities, facilitating collaboration, and providing positive leadership.
- Workplace Tolerance: The Workplace Tolerance Scale addresses respect for diversity in the workplace, including respect for varied perspectives and alternative opinions and solutions. Higher scores indicate respect for people independent of such factors as age, gender, and sexual orientation. Tolerance is valuable in all settings, but most important when functions require interaction with clients, customers, suppliers, colleagues or coworkers from broadly diverse demographic backgrounds.
The Business Attribute Inventory (BAI) Report Package includes group summary reports for each group and sub-group in the sample and an optional individual test-taker report for each person assessed.
Reports are generated immediately after the conclusion of testing and are available for clients to download making real time assessment possible. Read more about how our customer support specialists work with clients to select their reporting options on our Services tab or contact us for a consultation.
Group analytics include:
- Clients can generate and download Excel spreadsheet files of all scores: Dependability, Job Commitment, Honesty, Desire to Work, Desire to Learn, Desire to Think, Workplace Flexibility, Professionalism, Workplace Tolerance (nine mindset attributes valued in the thinking workplace). At the option of the client, these also include the responses to custom demographic questions added by the client to the assessment profile.
- Presentation-ready tables and graphic representations of the score distribution for each of the nine BAI mindset metrics.
- Customers who have added custom demographic questions can generate sub-group level reports for these variables, or for specific testing sessions or time periods.
Optional Individual Test-Taker Reports include:
- Scores for each of the nine BAI mindset metrics are reported on a 10-40 point scale accompanied by a qualitative interpretation (Not Manifested, Positive, Strong Positive).
- The Individual Test Taker Report can be pushed to an email address of the client’s choosing (for example, to an admissions office email, institutional assessment email, dean’s office email, etc.).
- The client controls whether individual reports are made available to the test-taker.
Companion Thinking Skills Assessments
Engaging problems and making decisions relies on both reasoning skills and habits of mind. For a complete assessment of critical thinking, it is recommended that skills and mindset be included to assess whether a person is both ‘willing and able’ to think well.

