INSIGHT Science & Engineering Pro

Population: INSIGHT Science & Engineering Professional is calibrated for use with skilled professionals who engage in scientific or engineering projects or who manage departments that work on those types of projects.

Administration: Administer at any time, in any location with our user-friendly, encrypted, online, multi-lingual interface.

Support Materials: INSIGHT User Manual: Includes all needed information for the administration and interpretation of individual and group scores. A separate INSIGHT Science & Engineering Professional Debrief Document, which client may elect to provide to the persons who are assessed, is available at no additional charge.

Specs: Max 90 minutes timed administration.

• 30 minutes allotted for 94 Likert-style Agree-Disagree items – science & engineering professional mindset attribute belief, value, and expectation statements.
• 60 minutes allotted for 46 engaging, science & engineering setting scenario-based reasoning skill evaluation questions.

Deliverables: Individual score reports of all metrics for each person assessed. Optional group graphics with statistical summary of scores; Excel spreadsheet of responses to all custom demographic questions, and all scores for each person assessed.

Results Reported (Actionable Metrics):

• Science & Engineering Professional Mindset Attributes of successful professionals:

1. Truth-seeking — Courage to follow reasons and evidence wherever they lead
2. Open-mindedness — Willingness to consider a variety of alternative opinions
3. Analyticity / Foresight — Consistent effort to anticipate consequences
4. Systematicity / Focus — Habit of taking an orderly and organized approach to problem solving
5. Confidence in Reasoning — Disciplined reliance on well-reasoned judgment
6. Inquisitiveness – Continuous attention to and desire for learning
7. Cognitive Maturity – The expectation of making timely, well-considered judgments
8. Resourceful – The drive to find the means necessary to fulfill workplace responsibilities
9. Collaborative – Preference for and comfort with team-oriented problem solving

• Essential Reasoning Skills of Science & Engineering Professionals, and an OVERALL rating:

1. Analysis — Accurate identification of the problem and decision-critical elements
2. Inference — Drawing warranted and logical conclusions from reasons and evidence 
3. Evaluation — Assessing credibility of claims and the strength of arguments
4. Interpretation – Discovering and determining significance and contextual meaning
5. Explanation – Providing the evidence, reasons, assumptions, or rationale for judgments
6. Induction – Reasoned judgment in ambiguous, risky, and uncertain contexts
7. Deduction – Reasoned judgment in precisely defined, logically rigorous contexts
8. Numeracy / Quantitative Reasoning – Judgment in contexts involving quantitative information

OVERALL Reasoning Skills — Sustained use of critical thinking to form reasoned judgments

Scoring:

• Each science & engineering professional mindset attribute is scored on a 40-point scale divided into three qualitative categories (Not Manifested, Positive, Strong Positive).
• Each science & engineering professional reasoning skill metric is scored on a 600-point scale with corresponding qualitative ratings (Not Manifested, Moderate, Strong, Superior, and Exceptional).

Optional Custom Questions: At no additional cost clients can add up to ten client-specific custom descriptive survey questions to the assessment profile to enable sub-group reports.

Currently Available Languages: English

Licenses to Administer: Sold globally exclusively by Insight Assessment to engineering firms, scientific research organizations, pharmaceutical companies, thinktanks, aerospace companies, military and governmental organizations, recruiters, HR departments, and consultants; competitive grant-funded project directors; qualified researchers and doctoral dissertation scholars; and other for-profit and not-for-profit science and engineering related entities.

Comprehensive assessment services are available to our clients using any of the assessments in our INSIGHT series, including INSIGHT Science & Engineering Professional, at no additional cost:

Starting with an initial consultation to learn about your project, our experienced assessment specialists support your project in multiple ways. 

• Instrument selection: We help the client find the INSIGHT tool that best fits the organizational level and industry sector 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.
• Assessment logistics: We help clients assess job applicants onsite or remotely; for development projects, we help in gathering pre- or post- training aggregated assessment data.
• Privacy Protection: We assist the client with privacy protection strategies, including, if needed, completely anonymous double-blind assessments.
• 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.
• Login generation: We provide the client with as many single-use individual logins as requested so that test-takers can access our secure, encrypted, online assessment interface in a controlled manner.
• Report generation: We manage the online report generation tool and produce, at the client’s request, group reports, aggregating and disaggregating data by their client-specific custom demographic questions. Individual reports can be sent automatically in real time.
• 24/7/365 emergency technical support for our client testing administrators

We demonstrate how easy it is to administer assessments using our intuitive, browser-based, multilingual online testing system on almost any device: computer, tablet, or smartphone.

In addition to the full user manual included with each assessment instrument, preview packages enable future clients to experience the intended assessment tool in exactly the same way it will be used in their planned project. 

Science & Engineering Professional Mindset Attributes

• Truth-seeking: The professional who is a truth-seeker is committed to following reasons and evidence wherever they may lead, even if that means challenging cherished beliefs. Higher scores indicate the intellectual integrity and the courage to ask hard, sometimes frightening, questions. Courageous truth-seeking is a foundational characteristic of sound research.
• Open-mindedness: Open-mindedness is the tendency to allow others to voice divergent or dissenting views. Higher scores indicate a person who is likely to show tolerance toward the opinions of others. For professionals working in complex organizations or serving a diverse clientele, open-mindedness contributes to group cohesiveness and interpersonal harmony.
• Analyticity – Foresight: Analyticity or foresight is the tendency to be alert to the good and the bad potential outcomes of situations, choices, proposals, and plans. The foresightful professional attempts to anticipate problems for the project or for the client due to limitations of time, materials, budgets, regulations, space, equipment, personnel, environmental conditions, etc.
• Systematicity – Organization: The systematic professional tends to address matters in an organized and orderly way. For professionals in every field, an organized and systematic approach is essential to ensure the expeditious and comprehensive management of an inquiry or project.
• Confidence in Reasoning: Confidence in reasoning is the habitual tendency to trust informed reflective thinking as the optimal approach to problem solving and decision making of all kinds. The individual professional and the project team that is trustful of reasoned judgment is more likely to apply strong, objective, evidence-based reasoning when analyzing problems and making decisions.
• Inquisitiveness: The inquisitive professional has a driving desire to learn the explanations for events and phenomena of all kinds, even if the application of that new knowledge is not immediately apparent. The inquisitive professional is naturally curious about the latest advances in science, technology, and other fields as well.
• Maturity of Judgment: Maturity of judgment is the habit of seeing the complexity of issues and yet striving to make reasonable and timely decisions. Maturity of judgment enables the professional to avoid the problems created by imprudent, black-and-white thinking, jumping to conclusions, or stubbornly refusing to change when the evidence shows that change is warranted.
• Resourceful: The resourceful professional is driven to find the means necessary to fulfill responsibilities. Higher scores indicate an expectation of personal agency and self-reliance regarding accomplishing goals. Resourcefulness is valuable in team leaders, scientists, engineers, and managers tasked with key organizational duties.
• Collaborative: A collaborative professional strives to bring about the success of their professional group or project team and its mission. Higher scores indicate a person who puts team-work and the accomplishment of group goals ahead of personal gain or recognition.

Essential Reasoning Skills of Science & Engineering Professionals

• OVERALL: The OVERALL Reasoning Skills metric on the INSIGHT Professional represents the integration of thinking and reasoning skills needed to make operational decisions and to address concerns at the professional levels of an organization. (This is a holistic score which represents the result of the test-taker’s sustained effort at coming to reasoned judgments using the full set of more specific reasoning skills described in the other eight metrics.)
• Analysis: Analytical skills are used to identify assumptions, reasons, themes, and the evidence used in making arguments or offering explanations. Analytical skills enable us to consider all the key elements in any given situation, and to determine how those elements relate to one another. People with strong analytical skills notice important patterns and details.  People use analysis to gather the most relevant information from spoken language, documents, signs, charts, graphs, and diagrams.
• Inference: Inference skills enable us to draw conclusions from reasons, evidence, observations, experiences, or our values and beliefs.  Using Inference, we can predict the most likely consequences of the options we may be considering. Inference enables us to see the logical consequences of the assumptions we may be making. Sound inferences rely on accurate information. People with strong inference skills draw logical or highly reliable conclusions using all forms of analogical, probabilistic, empirical, and mathematical reasoning.
• Evaluation: Evaluative skills are used to assess the credibility of the claims people make or post, and to assess the quality of the reasoning people display when they make arguments or give explanations.  We can also apply our evaluation skills to assess the quality of many other elements that are important for good thinking, such as analyses, interpretations, explanations, inferences, options, opinions, beliefs, hypotheses, proposals, and decisions. People with strong evaluation skills can judge the quality of arguments and the credibility of speakers and writers.
• Interpretation: Interpretation is the process of discovering, determining, or assigning meaning.  Interpretation skills can be applied to anything, e.g., written messages, charts, diagrams, maps, graphs, memes, and verbal and non-verbal exchanges. People apply their interpretive skills to behaviors, events, and social interactions when deciding what they think something means in a given context.
• Explanation: Explanation is the process of justifying what we have decided to do or what we have decided to believe. People with strong explanation skills provide the evidence, methods, and considerations they actually relied on when making their judgment. Explanations can include our assumptions, reasons, values, and beliefs. Strong explanations enable others to understand and to evaluate our decisions.
• Induction: Inductive reasoning relies on estimating likely outcomes. Decision making in contexts of uncertainty relies on inductive reasoning. Inductive decisions can be based on analogies, case studies, prior experience, statistical analyses, simulations, hypotheticals, trusted testimony, and the patterns we may recognize in a set of events, experiences, symptoms or behaviors. Inductive reasoning always leaves open the possibility, however remote, that a highly probable conclusion might be mistaken. Although it does not yield certainty, inductive reasoning can provide a solid basis for confidence in our conclusions and a reasonable basis for action.
• Deduction: Deductive reasoning is rigorously logical and clear cut. Deductive skills are used whenever we determine the precise logical consequences of a given set of rules, conditions, beliefs, values, policies, principles, procedures, or terminology. Deductive reasoning is deciding what to believe or what to do in precisely defined contexts that rely on strict rules and logic.  Deductive validity results in a conclusion which absolutely cannot be false, if the assumptions or premises from which we started all are true. Deductive validity leaves no room for uncertainty. That is, unless we decide to change the very meanings of our words or the grammar of our language.
• Numeracy / Quantitative Reasoning: Numeracy refers to the ability to make judgments based on quantitative information in a variety of contexts. People with strong numeracy can describe how quantitative information is gathered, manipulated, and represented textually, verbally, and visually in graphs, charts, tables, and diagrams. Numeracy requires all the core critical thinking skills. Numeracy includes being thoughtfully reflective while interpreting the meaning of information expressed in charts, graphs, or text formats, analyzing those elements, drawing accurate inferences from that information, and explaining and evaluating how those conclusions were reached. 

The INSIGHT Science & Engineering Professional Report Package includes an individual test-taker report for each person assessed and optional group summary reports for each group and sub-group in the sample.

Reports are generated immediately after the conclusion of testing, 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 free consultation.

Individual Reports include:

• Each professional mindset attribute is scored on a 40-point scale divided into three qualitative categories (Not Manifested, Positive, Strong Positive). 
• Each professional reasoning skill metric is scored on a 600-point scale with corresponding qualitative ratings (Not Manifested, Moderate, Strong, Superior, and Exceptional).
• The Individual Reports can be pushed as PDF files to an email address of the client’s choosing (for example, to an HR officer, a senior manager, an executive assistant, or to an external search firm or professional development consultant).  
• The client controls whether individual reports are made available to the test-taker.
• A short PDF assessment report debrief document to help in understanding scores – it can be distributed by the client to the people who were assessed.

Optional Group Analytics include:

• Excel spreadsheet files of all scores on all metrics. These also include the responses to optional custom demographic questions added by the client to the assessment profile.
• Presentation-ready tables and graphic representations of the score distribution for all metrics.
• Free upon request, our assessment support staff prepares and emails group analytical reports to clients using any of the INSIGHT series assessments.