Have you ever wondered what your personality type is? Are you an introvert or an extrovert? What jobs or interests best suit you?
Prof Datuk Dr Mohd Tajudin Md Ninggal can help you answer these questions! The inventor of Malaysia’s first online psychometric tests shares his thoughts about personality testing in Malaysia.
“I have had the opportunity to develop two psychometric tools, namely the TAJMA Online Personality Plus (TPe+), and TAJMA Online Career Interest Plus (TCIP+). They are Malaysia’s first online psychological tools designed to identify an individual’s or group’s personality traits and career interests. Developed based on the Malaysian cultural values, norms, and psychology, the two tests have been copyrighted since 2003 and are suitable for anyone between the ages of 12 to 85.
TPe+ is an online psychological test designed to measure 12 personality traits and is currently available in three editions, namely for schools, colleges and universities, and organisations. TC+ is slightly different, as it is used to discover an individual’s personality traits and career interests, and match them to his/her preferred types of occupations. Both tools provide scientific evidence on a person’s personality traits and career interests and are useful for recruitment, talent management, counselling and career coaching, job placements and research studies.
It has always been my strong interest to learn about personalities and human behaviours, and the idea for these tools started when I was pursuing my master’s and doctoral degrees in the US. I had the chance to do my internship at the university testing and evaluation centre and assisted my professor in conducting psychological testing and assessment to the campus community and corporate clientele. Psychometric profiling has been actively adopted and utilised in the US and other western countries for the past 50 years.
My six-year stint in the US gave me the opportunity to build up my knowledge and competency in the field of psychological assessment. I began to realise that Malaysia needs a specific psychological tool that is suitable and sensitive to our cultural and psychological contexts since the majority of western psychological tools have their own bias towards Asians. The 17 years of active research and development, teaching, consulting, and publication in the area of psychometric profiling is my little contribution to the field of counselling psychology in Malaysia.
My immediate plan is to develop a series of TAJMA online psychometric profiles, such as those indicating stress, integrity and entrepreneurship. I am currently working on one that focuses on organisational leadership. My goal is to establish a psychological testing and assessment centre at OUM. I envision OUM to become the referral centre for online psychometric profiling and consulting activities not only in Malaysia but in the Southeast Asian region.”
Prof Datuk Dr Mohd Tajudin is an expert in counselling psychology. He is attached to the Faculty of Education and Social Sciences and teaches various courses in the Master of Counselling (MC) and Doctoral programmes.
Find out more about MC here.