Oh, thought I’d explain what Johnson O’Connor is for other posters.
Johnson O’Connor was a person. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_O’Connor
Back in the 1950s, General Electric was located in a company town. Many locals came to work at the factory when they finished high school. The practice was to give new hires the jobs that were open and needed filling. There were some new hires who were wash outs and got fired. But in a couple of cases, the managers would say something like “I don’t want to give this kid a bad reference. (S)he’s a good kid and obviously trying, but for some reason (s)he just can’t do the very simple tasks (s)he has to do.” So, instead of firing them, GE assigned some of them to different departments. Almost all of them remained employed and a few were absolute STARS in different jobs.
So, GE asked Johnson O’Connor to develop pre-employment tests which would allow it to match each job applicant with a job (s)he could do well right from the beginning. This was a very innovative approach at the time.
He did so…and some people in town started asking him if people who weren’t going to work for GE could take the tests too. O’Connor got really interested in the study of aptitudes.
Today, his work is continued by the Johnson O’Connor foundation. Some of its ideas are thought old fashioned now, but they make sense to me. Essentially, he believed that we excel at jobs when they match our aptitudes. No matter how much musical aptitude you have, you won’t excel without practicing and O’Connor recognizes that. But on the other hand, if you are tone deaf, you could practice the rest of your life and never be even average. O’Connor tested successful professionals and mapped out which fields matched which aptitudes. So, if you take your student for testing you might learn that (s)he has amazing tonal memory and then you’ll find out what fields others who scored high in this area succeed in. He thought that in the long term, aptitudes were more predictive of which career fields would make each individual person happy and fullfilled than are interests–the sort of thing the Kuder Preference test somebody seems to be describing above purports to measure.
He also figured out that aptitude only explained so much. His research lead him to conclude that the #1 thing that stopped people from advancing was poor vocabulary. Through research, he found that CEOs had extremely large vocabularies—REGARDLESS OF THEIR EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND. He found that Horatio Alger types had, on their own, acquired extensive vocabularies. So, he also pushed hard for programs that would improve the vocabulary of young people, especially children from poor families.
There’s some other aspects of his research that are controversial. For example, you are tested as to how you relate to people. It’s kind of …but not quite…extrovert vs. Introvert. The sort of introvert type–again, it’s not quite that–tend to work best by themselves with little or no supervision.
And, he studied alternate hand/eye dominance. It used to be thought to doom you. It doesn’t, but kids with it are often unusual klutzy when young. For some sports, though, it’s really, really helpful. Golf is one. (Alternate hand/eye dominance is when a person who is right handed has a dominant left eye visually or the reverse. You can usually figure out which eye is dominant by noting which eye you instinctively use when taking a photo…)
Anyway…I just thought I’d explain the theory behind the testing. And I should have explained above that the only score between 5 and 90% my D got was in music.
The person I know who most benefited from the test was a very shy girl who was an average student. She loved to draw. Nobody in her family was the least bit artistic. She’d never had a lesson and nobody encouraged her interest. JO’C testing showed the girl scored very, very high for artistic aptitude. Parents were sceptical but said okay, we’ll sign her up for some art lessons at the local (well regarded) art school. She was about 16 at the time and ended up genuinely excelling. Majored in studio art in college–and thanks to JO’C and the art school had a good portfolio when she applied.