On answers. We like and at the same time don’t like answering and getting feedback depending on whether it’s reassuring or unsettling. To answer a question is a moment of confrontation and negotiation, in short: labour. We try to select the answers that show us in the best light. Generally, response options are designed for standard scoring with dichotomous or multi-streamed scales relating to endorsement, frequency, intensity or comparison. A large volume of test questions is linked the psychometric Likert scale which often shows five balanced positive or negative options[1] .
As for my enquiry, I’m not looking at a test purpose or net efficiency of questionnaires. I’m rather concerned with the “relative” importance we assign to our answers, making informed or situation-based choices or simply replying out of the blue. Do we really distinguish between gradual nuances of reply options – for example when it comes to a scales of ‘trueness’ and optional items such as ‘true’ or ‘definitely true’? To say something is significant often implies an importance or relevance for decision-making. And how much is answering a game and guess – escaping a formal set up and adopting everyday behaviour.
My work ‘Good testing’ is based on a commonly used response scale highlighted by a randomly appearing light (‘tick’) underneath. Awaiting the next lit option our decision-making mode attempts to anticipate which one is next. There is no particular question to answer. Good testing supplies random answers to many. Accentuating notions of game and guess this work stands for considered or spontaneous responses. In fact even if you do not have one, it doesn’t stop and suggests another random answer. Just in case.
[1] Burns, Alvin; Burns, Ronald (2008). Basic Marketing Research (Second ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education. p. 250
While looking into gestures that form part of how we communicate in wider sense of ‘test’ situations my attention circled around nodding. Most commonly, it indicates agreement or acceptance. Even a non-verbal nodding gesture is a sign for acknowledgement. Furthermore, nodding is a key gesture in conversations and argumentation that aim to convince. Generally, nodding is quite natural for us to do or to follow and tends to stimulate levels of agreement. As one of the key ideas for interpersonal communication both in formal and informal ways it made me think of processing advice on nodding in the format of a recorded paragraph.
“Nodding is a good strategy. Nod occasionally while you listen. It makes you more likely to agree. Nod a lot in front of others. It is natural for them to do the same. Nod while you talk. It makes you extra convincing. Nod frequently during conversations. The persons you are talking to will find it hard to not nod themselves. It makes them more likely to agree to what you are saying. Try. Keep nodding!”
Test taking has become a valuable skill. There is endless expertise insisting to best prepare test taker; the most common 5 (most popular 10, top 20, essential 31 etc) interview questions to best prepare for all kind of scenarios, best case, worst case. In fact, a lot of the scripted advice follows fairly common sense, some obviously produce notions of benefits yet I guess simply serve a reassuring and directing purpose.
Melting in some of my own professional experience the listed phrases soon made me think of text-processing and injecting humour. As their focus is interview preparation I kept looking for a tool or mechanism to (re-)introduce and enable a self-operated training of those instructions in the everyday. It made me think of flash cards. Widely used as a kind of mental exercise flash cards enable a reviewing of information in intervals.
I have turned a selected cross-section of instructions ranging from of how to prepare, arrive, respond, behave, attend – the dos and don’ts into a set of “interval flashcards”.
