The Development and Validation of the TALENTx7 Assessment
(2023 Edition)

Periodically, a team of psychometricians and statisticians completely reanalyzes all the participant data collected during the previous 2-3 years. It is the third time that we have performed it; the other times were in 2017 and 2019. This approach enables the assessment to remain current. Global norms are continuously updated, so they truly represent the contemporary workplace. Just think how much the world has changed during the past couple of years! Many other assessments are using norms that were collected from the early 2000s or earlier. It is a major undertaking. We tweak assessment questions as needed; sometimes “research” questions replace “scored” ones and new research questions are crafted (to be analyzed during the next go around). Algorithms may be slightly revised, depending on the analytics. And obviously, global norms are updated – actually the old norms are replaced completely by ones derived from the current dataset. Again, to keep them fresh and alive.

This time the TALENTx7 dataset has 10,637 participants, representing well over 25 countries from literally around the world. Virtually every business sector is included, from manufacturing to retail, professional services to pharma, high tech to education, and mining to banking – profit, nonprofit, religious, government, and public. Overall, each version of the TALENTx7 Assessment “sharpens the spear” (i.e., it gets better and more accurate) – both in terms of tweaking items as well as possessing a more robust and expansive global normative data base.

The 2023 Edition of the Technical Manual presents current results that continue to support the scientific merits of the TALENTx7 Assessment. The construct validity of the seven facets of learning agility was upheld. Reliabilities for the 12 psychological scales used by the assessment again were strong, with a mean coefficient alpha of 0.77 (well above the professional standard of 0.70). Further, no consistent subgroup differences surfaced with the larger dataset, reinforcing the finding of no adverse impact due to gender, race, or age. Criterion-related validation studies demonstrated a significant linkage between scores on the TALENTx7 and leader success. Overall, the analyses presented in this technical manual strongly indicate that the TALENTx7 Assessment is a reliable, valid measure of learning agility.

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