Differential Aptitude Tests™ For Personnel and Career Assessment

ANNOUNCEMENT
As of 2025 the following paper versions of the DAT For PCA are going out of print.
Please consider the online DAT Next Generation – click here.

Use the Differential Aptitude Tests™ For Personnel and Career Assessment to assess general and specific mental abilities that relate to a wide variety of positions to ensure that people have the competencies required in order to succeed.  Before you invest time and money to train a new employee, test your applicants for:

• Ability to visualize 2D shapes in 3D
• Problem solving abilities with numbers
• Ability to see sequences in shapes and patterns
• Verbal reasoning by the relationships between pairs of words
• Addition, subtraction, division, percentages, algebra, and multiplication

The Differential Aptitude Tests for Personnel and Career Assessment (DAT) can determine an applicant’s general cognitive abilities and aptitudes across a wide range of occupations.

What It’s Best Used For

• Professional and Management Placement: Utilizing the Verbal Reasoning section to assess higher-order thinking skills and place candidates in managerial positions of responsibility.
• Technical, Engineering, and Math Vetting: Deploying the Numerical Ability test to predict candidate success in fields like physics, chemistry, bookkeeping, engineering, and various trades.
• Non-Verbal Pattern Vetting: Applying Abstract Reasoning to identify strong problem-solving capabilities when the role relies on seeing relationships between physical objects or trends rather than words (e.g., computer programming, drafting, or automotive repair).
• Mechanical and Assembly Screening: Assessing an applicant’s grasp of basic machinery principles, tools, and motion through the Mechanical Reasoning module to hire competent carpenters, maintenance workers, and assemblers.
• Spatial Design and Dentistry Audits: Measuring three-dimensional visualization skills via the Space Relations scale for specialized careers like drafting, architecture, clothing design, art, and dentistry.
• Business Communication Screening: Evaluating a candidate’s sharp attention to detail by tracking their capacity to spot errors in grammar, punctuation, and capitalization using the Language Usage test.
• Predicting Technical Training Success: Benchmarking baseline mental focus to accurately forecast long-term learning speed and training success before investing development capital.

Reading Level: 6th grade

Completion time: 6–20 minutes (depending on test)

ATTENTION
The Differential Aptitude Tests™-5th Edition and Differential Aptitude Tests™for Career Interest
were discontinued as of September 2014 and are no longer available for purchase.

Differential Aptitude Tests™ or DAT™ is a suite of assessments measuring cognitive abilities in a number of areas. This latest edition, DAT™ Next Generation, combines modern Computerized Adaptive Testing technology (CAT) to offer five new DAT tests in a number of languages.

Compared with traditional fixed-form tests, CAT presents a modern method of delivering item-banked tests to job applicants or students with many enhancements from the previous version.

Highly predictive of performance

Initially launched in 1947 to support career guidance and vocational counselling in students, the Differential Aptitude Tests™ For Personnel and Career Assessment use has extended to measure an individual’s level of general and specific mental abilities that are required for success in many job roles and training courses. The increased usage of ability tests in these areas is supported by in-depth research showing that tests of mental ability are highly predictive of performance.

DAT tests help measure aptitude for learning and succeeding in several key areas.

Benefits of the Differential Aptitude Tests™ For Personnel and Career Assessment

• Assess general cognitive abilities, perceptual abilities, clerical and language skills.
• Predict training success (e.g., r = .46 to .48 for computer programmers) and job performance (e.g., r = .24 to .31 for administrative, technical, and engineering employees) for a wide range of occupations.
• Strongly correlated with other well-known aptitude tests such as the GATB (r = .62 to .81 for tests intended to tap similar aptitudes) and ASVAB (r =.73 to .79 for tests intended to tap similar aptitudes).

Features

Six different tests make up the Differential Aptitude Tests™ For Personnel and Career Assessment.

• Verbal Reasoning
• Numerical Ability
• Abstract Reasoning
• Mechanical Reasoning
• Space Relations
• Language Usage

Languages

• UK English and French now available
• US English, Dutch, and Spanish coming 2019

Administration: 6-20 minutes per test, 2 hours for complete battery – Online and Paper Administration
Test Setting: Individual or Group
Ages/Grades: 16 years and older
Norms: Percentiles
Language: English

The DAT for Personnel & Career Assessment Subtests Help Measure Aptitude for Success in:

Verbal Reasoning – is appropriate for measuring general cognitive ability and for placing employees in professional, managerial, and other positions of responsibility requiring higher order thinking skills.

Numerical Ability – test the understanding of numerical relationships and facility in handling numerical concepts. Good prediction of success of applicants in such fields as mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering, and in occupations such as laboratory assistant, bookkeeper, statistician, shipping clerk, carpenter, tool-making, and other professions related to the physical sciences.

Abstract Reasoning – is a nonverbal measure of the ability to perceive relationships in abstract figure patterns. Useful in selection when the job requires perception of relationships among things rather than among words or numbers, such as mathematics, computer programming, drafting, and automobile repair.

Mechanical Reasoning – closely parallels the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test and measures the ability to understand basic mechanical principles of machinery, tools, and motion. It is useful in selection decisions about applicants for jobs such as carpenter, mechanic, maintenance worker, and assembler.

Space Relations – measures the ability to visualize a three dimensional object from a two dimensional pattern, and how this object would look if rotated in space. This ability is important in fields such as drafting, clothing design, architecture, art, die making, decorating, carpentry, and dentistry.

Language Usage – measures the ability to detect errors in grammar, punctuation, and capitalization which is important in business communication.

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