Comparison of the OPQ with the Saville Consulting Wave personality assessments
It’s hard to switch from a psychometric test that you may have been using for many years to a new personality assessment that you may have heard relatively little about. We know because we went through the same process.
When in doubt, sometimes busy humans think it’s best to leave things as they are. However, after spending just a few minutes researching what the Saville Wave range of reviews actually offers, we decided it was a ‘no-brainer’ as they say in Australia! It really makes sense… keep reading!
The original author of the OPQ is Professor Peter Saville. Professor Saville was in fact the ‘S’ of SHL (‘H’ stands for Holdsworth and ‘L’ stands for Limited). He is responsible for the new Saville Wave, developed by him and his team at Saville Consulting. He has remarked in relation to the old OPQ that it was a great test in its day.
However, today we need newer, more modern and innovative tests that are relevant to a new and constantly evolving workplace. Looking at both the design of the Saville Wave and the content of the questions, it is immediately apparent that the questionnaire better reflects the current workplace. The OPQ was written about 25 years ago. There was some updating of the questions in 1988, but mainly the items reflect the world as it was those years ago.
Saville Wave has captured the modern world by asking questions related to networking, engaging others, comfort level with information technology, written communication, receiving feedback, encouraging others, developing strategies, identifying business opportunities, learning speed, taking responsibility for big decisions, building a relationship, sticking with decisions and more.
Remember, many of these concepts didn’t really exist more than 20 years ago; Networking, for example, was a whole different ballgame in the pre-Internet world. Not to mention the fact that most of us didn’t have to deal with IT unless we were in an IT job, whereas today a large part of the workforce must use computers. However, this not all.
While the OPQ was validated after production, the Saville Wave was designed within a model focused on research and validation. This meant that all questions were internationally validated before publication. These results were later published in the British Psychological Society’s Review of Selection and Development.
In addition, the Saville Wave includes all-new scales that weren’t available on the OPQ all those years ago. For example, Wave can directly assess strategic thinking, learning styles, self-confidence, motivation of others, conflict resolution, and integrity.
In terms of measuring different facets of behavior, the OPQ measures only the dimension level (scale) and does not report on individual facets of behavior. For example, ‘persuasive’ is made up of the facets of ‘sell’, ‘negotiate’ and ‘convince’, but these are not independently validated or scored. Saville Wave, on the other hand, provides a very rich performance at the facet level.
For the full wave, there are 109 separately scored facets. The facets provide insight into unique areas of individual difference and thus facilitate a better diagnosis of the person’s development and job adjustment.
Another innovation within the Saville Consulting Wave is that it has been designed to assess both talent and motivation. This is useful as it can highlight, for example, that even though a candidate isn’t very good at solving problems, they will give themselves and even try their best to improve. However, while a candidate is very good at creating novel solutions, they prefer to go with the tried and tested.
Saville Wave distinguishes both efficacy and motivation for 36 behavior styles. This provides rich diagnostic information for selection, placement and development and is key to predicting sustained performance.
The model underlying any personality assessment is a crucial factor in both the validity and usefulness of the tool. Wave is built from a single behavioral model with a common language to measure and combine behavioral style, motivation, competencies, culture, organizational environment, and 360-degree performance. It is fully integrated from conception. OPQ is not multidimensional and relies on different measures and different models to arrive at total solutions.
When we assess the personality of a potential job incumbent or when we evaluate a current incumbent as part of a development process, we are looking for a true picture of that individual. There are many tests available on the market and many of them don’t really hit the mark. For example, assessments that aim to paint a picture of your candidate based on 4 simple scales.
While the OPQ has always been a respected test, it offers a choice of scores (normative) or rankings (ipsative) with a strong preference by practitioners for ipsative as it controls for social desirability responses. Both ratings and rankings have unique advantages and disadvantages. In the case of (ipsative) classifications, the resulting profile artificially exaggerates good and bad characteristics. It is not possible to be good at everything or bad at everything. Therefore, we do not get a real picture of the candidate.
With the innovative combination of ratings and rankings in a dual dynamic format, Wave provides the truest picture of an individual’s self-reported style to date. This provides greater validity over normative and ipsative scores alone. This contributes significantly to greater validity and a more realistic image of the individual.
Also, while the OPQ can report on socially desirable responses, it cannot focus on them. By reporting statistically significant differences between ipsative and normative scores, Saville Wave hones in on exactly where the distortion is likely to have occurred.
A burning question on the minds of those who choose the test is “how long does it take to complete the test?”. For the OPQ, it takes about 1 hour to complete just the ipsative version. It does not provide information on motivation or cultural appropriateness, nor on individual facets of behavior. Compare this to the Saville Wave, which takes about 35 minutes to complete and includes effectiveness and motivation scores for 36 dimensions and scores for 109 individual facets of behaviour.
It provides ipsative, normative and combined profiles in a single questionnaire. Additionally, Wave reports cultural/environmental enhancers and inhibitors. If even that is too long for your busy folks, Saville Wave Focus, the shorter version of Wave is even shorter, taking around 15 minutes to complete and still offering exceptional reliability and validity.
Ultimately, the reason to use a personality assessment in the first place is to predict job performance. Saville Consulting has referred to this as “horsepower”. The technical term is Validity Criterion and this has a direct impact on the return on investment. The more validity, the better people’s decisions. OPQ has good validity.
The validity of the published mean composite scale is around 0.38. This is the average correlation of each scale with actual job skills. However, for the Saville Wave, the published average composite validity is greater than 0.46 (about 20% more predictive).
Additionally, Wave predicts overall job competency at 0.38 and chance for promotion at 0.59. 75% of Wave validations are 0.4 or better and 25% are between 0.55 and 0.70. Directing correlates 0.7 with ‘Leading people’. Add this information to study results published in the UK in the summer of 2008 which showed that Saville Consulting Wave passed all competitive tests in the market for predicting job performance (including OPQ, 16PF, 15FQ+, Hogan Personality Inventory, MBTI, DISC and others). This, in our opinion, is the main motivator for switching to the Saville Wave test.
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– OPQ is a registered trademark of Saville & Holdsworth Limited
– Saville Wave is a registered trademark of Saville Consulting Group