Attention hand-scoring customers: You will notice new and improved candidate answer sheets and scoring stencils in your test orders starting June 5, 2019! The most notable change to the answer sheets, besides minor layout improvements, is the collection of demographic information directly on the answer sheets. The Assessment Services Department recently made these changes to facilitate test response data collection and to make the submission process easier for customers. Gone are the days of having to physically mail your test response data back to IPMA-HR (unless you want to). You can now conveniently scan, upload, and send your completed and ungraded candidate answer sheets securely online to IPMA-HR’s Assessment Services Department!

Why share scores from your test administration with the Assessment Services Department?

Have you ever called the Assessment Services Department and asked for guidance on setting cut scores or for national data on adverse impact? As a member of IPMA-HR’s Assessment Services Department, I can personally attest that we receive these calls all the time! I am always happy to be able to share national data with customers to help guide their decisions regarding setting cut scores, investigating/addressing adverse impact, and handling item challenges.

As test developers and test users, we have a legal responsibility to make fair assessments and selection decisions. IPMA-HR’s Assessment Services Department is dedicated to helping our customers make fair decisions. To assist with this process, we routinely collects test score and demographic data for each of our tests from our customers. The purpose of collecting this information is to allow us to run adverse impact analyses on our exams; this information is then provided to our test users in the form of a Test Response Data Report and includes the score frequency distribution and adverse impact data. It is our hope that these reports can help inform our users’ selection decisions. However, we would not be able to compile and share these reports to help inform your selection decisions without your help! These reports are compiled thanks to the agencies that choose to voluntarily submit their candidate data from each test administration. All data is held completely confidential and reported only in the form of group statistics.

How can I submit data from my agency’s test administration?

Be on the lookout for the new Test Response Data Submission forms in your test orders, which contains important instructions for how to submit your data either electronically or by mail. As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact the Assessment Services Department: assessment@ipma-hr.org or 1-800-381-TEST (8378). Thank you!