Tests, tests, tests. From formal assessments for health, care, school etc. and top of the list work, to personality tests to daily life quizzes – we are being constantly assessed and increasingly fascinated to question-testing ourselves. Institutional tests considered as mandatory and frequent quality gates programming us from early on. Their set up is administered and decisions on the test takers are based on scoring of answers.
Nevertheless, at our leisure we increasingly opt for self-reporting of personal information to compare or entertain ourselves or seeking more serious answers for our self-concept. According to social comparison theory (Festinger 1954) we are looking for self-evaluation in comparing ourselves to others. Looking at the test takers their expectation and anxiety levels push for a self-testing in prospect of new personal insight. The drive for reassurance of who we are (or in fact, think we are) forms part of the ongoing test taking agenda.
Also, there is a common underlying anxiety when being confronted with questions related to tests, tentatively negative. Not only is our knowledge or understanding on test; it considerably alludes to the personal and our self-concept.
However, standardised tests gain their power from uniformity including standardised questions and effective answering mechanisms. So to start with, I have been looking into familiar test formats and situations, the nature of questions placed and array of corresponding response patterns. Whether interview, paper based questionnaire or online quiz there is both trust in the professional administered process and doubt of its guarantee.
Comparing the way questions appear across areas I became interested in processing by un-testing and unstandardising.
