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History of the PI Behavioral Assessment

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Learn more about the history of the BA and its various forms.

The PI Behavioral Assessment (BA) is one of the cornerstones of PI’s talent optimization system. Each year, over 3 million BAs are administered and over 10,000 professionals are trained in PI workshops. The BA focuses on work-related personality instead of broad measures of personality, maintaining focus on the behavioral drives that are relevant to job performance, employee development, succession planning, and change management. 

It was developed in 1955 by Arnold S. Daniels as a survey that measures a wide spectrum of behavioral characteristics. The assessment was a result of work performed by Daniels during the 1950s when he helped to develop and utilize behavioral tests for positions within the U.S. Army Air Corps. While doing this important work, he became convinced that there was a valuable role in business for these tools, which at the time were virtually unknown and rarely used. During this time, he developed the first statistically proven prototypes of what became known as the PI Behavioral Assessment, and in 1955, the first-generation survey checklist and training workshop were launched. Today, the science-based data from the BA are as important as ever in helping organizations achieve business results.

Today, The Predictive Index is a global organization with more than 1,000 partners who actively serve clients across 140 countries. The Predictive Index community includes more than 8,000 client organizations, many of which are or have been featured on the Fortune Global 500 list. The PI Behavioral Assessment is currently available in 68 languages, including English Braille. 

How has the BA been updated?

Since 1955, the PI BA has been in widespread commercial use, with revisions to the Assessment occurring in 1958, 1963, 1988, 1992 and most recently 2017 (“Form V”). These revisions were undertaken both to improve the BA’s psychometric properties (i.e., how accurately and fairly does the BA measure workplace behavior?) and to ensure that each of the individual items on the assessment conformed to appropriate and contemporary language norms. The work on the latest BA revision began in the fall of 2014 and was released in January 2017. Overall, these changes resulted in sharper measurement of personality, resolved some statistical artifacts, and reflected societal changes in word usage.

For more information about the history and development of the BA, please reach out to your PI consultant.

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