Unfortunately, we no longer offer this product. 

Please see our General Pre-Screening category for alternatives.

For alternatives to this and other discontinued assessment products click here.

Use the Thurstone Test of Mental Alertness™ Verbal Form to to help assess mental ability and an individual’s ability to learn, comprehend, solve problems and follow instructions for a wide variety of positions.  Before you invest the time and money to train a new employee, test your applicants.

This test provides the answers you need to make informed hiring and promotion decisions.

Want more information about this test?  Get it now.  Please REQUEST MORE INFO and we’ll reply promptly.

Not the perfect fit?  No problem.  We have many similar tests to choose from.  See alternatives in the General Pre-Screening category section of our site.

What does it do and what problem does it solve?

The Verbal Form is a test of linguistic and quantitative reasoning ability. It can be used in school and industrial settings at all educational levels from junior high school to college and at all employee levels from unskilled labor to middle management.   Use it to assess applicants for a variety of roles for industrial and clerk positions. Use the Search function (upper right) to find similar tests including the Thurstone Temperament Schedule, Thurstone Test of Mental Alertness and General Reasoning Test.

The Verbal Form helps measure general ability to learn and comprehend.

Job Types: Wide variety of occupations.
Administration: Paper and pencil or computer.
Scoring: Hand-scored carbon format. Yields two separate scale scores plus one overall total score.
Time: 15 minutes.

This shorter version of the TMA™ test (see the Thurstone Test of Mental Alertness) helps assess an individual’s ability to learn, comprehend, solve problems and follow instructions. The Verbal Form also helps assess an applicant’s ability to mentally adjust quickly and effectively to changing situations.

NOTE: The VF will not assess specific job skills such as customer service, mathematical ability, sales skills, management readiness, and etc.  We have hundreds of other things that will.  Please contact us for assistance in finding the right options for your needs.

The test consists of two scales:

Quantitative. Items consist of arithmetic reasoning and number-series problems.
Linguistic. Items consist of same-opposite word meanings and definitions.

Normative Data. Percentile industrial norms are listed for the following job classifications:

• bank tellers
• computer programmers
• department store personnel
• engineers
• firefighters
• first-line supervisors
• general adult sample
• managerial personnel
• police
• retail store managers
• sales personnel
• scientists
• secretaries
• secretary
• service personnel
• skilled trades
• stenographers

Percentile education norms are listed by linguistic, quantitative and total scores for ages 12-16, and for age 17 and over.

Validation Studies. Validation studies have been conducted in various companies and the scores on the Verbal Form were found to be related to job performance in the following jobs:

• chemical operator
• claims auditor
• claims examiner
• clerk (insurance)
• clerk (quantitative)
• clerk (various industries)
• electrician
• freight car repairer
• gas serviceperson
• high-level clerk
• keypunch operator
• telegrapher
• telephone service representative
• yard clerk

The Verbal Form was the subject of validation studies in an educational setting and was found to be related to educational achievement for 9th- through 12th-grade students. There are two forms, A and B, for the Verbal Form. They are comparable and can be used to retest applicants.

This assessment was originally a part of the Science Research Associates (SRA), assessment lineup, a subsidy of IBM. The ownership then changed as follows over the years and became London House, then Reid London House, then Pearson Reid London House, then Vangent, then General Dynamics IT, and finally Fifth Theory.

This, and other related assessments, went off market around 2018 and is no longer being published or available for purchase.