by: Khozaima Motiwala

'Test' is such a general term that one has to stress what its meaning in the context of this site. Perhaps for this I find the definition of 'test' given on the Princeton University website as the most appropriate. It says "A test is a procedure for measuring knowledge or memory or intelligence or aptitude or personality of a person."

The marvelous thing about the IQ & personality tests on 3SmartCubes, rather anywhere, is the fact that they require no prior preparation on the part of the test-giver. No studying or reading up is required. Be it IQ or personality, these tests are supposed to measure you as you normally are.

By their very nature these tests are objective or multi-choice. From the given choices the candidate has to simply mark the one he thinks is correct or most appropriate to him. Backend, unknown to the user, his answers are taken and passed through various formulae and algorithms to derive at a result. These formulae and algorithms are based on established psychological theories and results obtained from the tests of thousands of people.

Questions of personality tests are almost always situation-based. The question puts the user in a particular situation and asks him how he would react. The user has to choose the closest option from amongst those provided. Simple? Yes it is, and extremely effective. After all, how we react is a truthful indication of our personality. But one must always remember that there are never any right or wrong answers, the same way there is never a right or wrong personality.

In this respect, IQ and aptitude tests are obviously different. Each question has to have a correct answer whose points add to the users score. Some tests even have negative marks for wrong answers. Your final result, be it your IQ score or an aptitude grade, is always calculated against the general population. For e.g. a person is labeled 'intelligent' only because the intelligence of the average population is lower than his. Hypothetically, if the rest of the population were to have intelligence equal to his, then he would be labeled 'average'. In this respect, although an IQ or aptitude test itself is objective, the interpretation is very s