| The Psytech tests and questionnaires are psychological
instruments, and their use is regulated by law, much in the same
way as the use of certain scheduled medicines is controlled. Psychological
tests may only be used under the supervision of a registered
psychologist or by a psychometrist registered for independent
practice.
We require the signature of a registered
psychologist or a psychometrics registered for independent
practice when test materials, online access or scoring services are ordered. |
What do I do if I do not have a psychologist or psychometrist
(independent practice) in my company? |
If a company does not have a psychologist, Psytech SA can refer the
client to a registered person or one of our own associate
psychologists can perform
the service. We must, however, point out that the Health Professions
Act and the Professional Board for Psychology determine the restrictions
on the distribution and use of psychological test materials. We can
not supply materials to persons who may not legally use them, but we
will do everything we can to put you in touch with registered professionals
who know our products.
|
What will the supervising psychologist do? |
If one of our associate psychologists acts as supervising psychologist for a
client, we insist on regular consultations to make sure that the test
results are being used appropriately. The tests must be administered
by a person who is legally entitled to do so, and in practice that means
a psychometrist. If a company does not have a registered psychometrist
in their employ, we can assist
in making the appropriate arrangements to ensure that proper testing
practice is adhered to.
|
Why do I need to use registered people? Doesn't that make the process expensive? |
| The cost of using registered staff must be weighed
up against the potentially extremely costly and harmful consequences of doing
something illegal.
Unfortunately we have come across a large number of companies
who use unregistered persons to administer tests, interpret them
and even give feedback on the results, because they believe that
by doing so they keep costs down. Some companies believe that
they can have unregistered persons trained by the test publisher
and that this training makes it legal for them to use tests. Some
test publishers encourage this belief, and undertake to train
unregistered persons, after which they are prepared to sell them
test materials. Obviously this practice has commercial benefit
for the test publisher, but it is not in the best interests of
the clients or the persons who are tested.
|
Apart from the fact that we insist on proper professional
supervision of our tests and questionnaires, we try to make the instruments
as accessible as possible:
- There is no compulsory training in the use of Psytech instruments for registered
psychologists. Training is, however, available and can be arranged on an
in-house basis for companies. Psytech SA also offers open courses for
professionals on the use of its tests.
- There is no annual license fee to cover support and research. Basic research
(calculation of reliabilities, norms and correlations) is done free of
charge as part of our service, provided that the results can be
disseminated to other users of Psytech instruments. Research which is
aimed at answering specific business questions for the client, is done
as a billable consulting service.
- We make the GeneSys test administration software available at a
reasonable price
including all the tests and reports, and are prepared to sell small
numbers of test booklets and answer sheets at a time. We also sell
scoring credits in small numbers to customers who prefer to order in
small amounts.
- In spite of the drop in the value of the Rand, and the fact that
we deal in materials licensed from overseas, we have kept our price
increases to the absolute minimum.
- Test booklets are sold, not rented. Technical manuals can be
downloaded from the Web at no charge. The South African User Guides and
Research Reference is distributed on CD and can be purchased from our
office at a nominal charge. Research information on our tests is also
available for download via this website.
- Academic institutions qualify for a very substantial discount on
the materials and the software, subject to certain conditions. (See
the 'academic' page).
Back to Top |
|
 |
Introduction |
|
Who we are |
|
Representation outside
Gauteng |
|
Conditions of access
to Psytech instruments in SA |
|