OMR cuts recruitment workload for West Yorkshire Police
An optical mark reader (OMR)
supplied by Kendata Peripherals
has enabled West Yorkshire Police to make dramatic reductions
in the time taken to process PIR (police initial recruitment)
test and promotion assessment forms.
Before adopting the Kendata
system, the manual checking of multiple- choice responses
using a template used to take one of the force's support staff
at least a day for each batch of 50 forms. The OMR
has now cut this time to just 8 minutes, thereby freeing staff
to concentrate on other activities.
Using the standard Home Office PIR test form as a starting
point, Kendata designed a new double-sided OMR form with clearly
laid out sections for candidates to mark their responses to the
multiple-choice questions in each of the five PIR tests.
Once a group of candidates has completed all the tests, the
batch of forms is loaded into the automatic optical mark reader,
which then reads the data and transfers it to a PC.
Specially written Windows-based software within the PC converts
the raw data into standard scores to ensure the statistical validity
of the results, and just a few minutes later a simple report
is printed out showing the scores for each candidate.
The new system has provided the force with a rapid and accurate
method of marking not only the basic PIR tests but also a variety
of promotion assessment tests.
According to Dennis Aldam, Assessment Services Manager of
the West Yorkshire Police, the OMR now processes about 15,000
forms per year and has proved to be an outstanding success. "In
terms of saving human resources, it has been of enormous benefit.
The Kendata system does an excellent job and hasn't let us down
once", he said.
- ends -
8th October 1996 Ref. KE63/2
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