PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS IN VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE 153 
If both the tests for general intelligence and the trade tests 
could be incorporated in a vocational guidance program for the 
school and the college it would be possible to estimate the indi- 
vidual’s all-round capacity as well as any special capacity that 
he might have. The trade tests to be used with novices or 
vocationally untrained persons, as would be the case here, would 
have to be framed to sound native bent, and not to sound (as 
was the case in the Army) the capacity the person had by virtue 
of specific vocational training. Not much has so far been done 
along this line and it may be too much to expect that a great 
deal can be done. Professor Seashore of the University of Iowa 
seems to have succeeded in testing for musical ability, and there 
are a number of men who are busy trying to contrive tests that 
will have forecasting value in other directions. Dean Schneider 
of the College of Engineering, University of Cincinnati, is scep- 
tical and maintains that the only way to test for vocational 
fitness or unfitness is ^^on the job.” It may be, however, that 
the remarkable success of the trade tests in the Army — con- 
futing the sceptic — will have both a heartening and enlightening 
effect, and that in consequence real things will be achieved 
before many years in creating and applying similar tests in 
educational institutions. . 
With respect to the general intelligence tests, it seems fair to 
say that as a rule they do really test, though in a more or less 
rough way. As adapted for military use (under the name Army 
recruit test) they counted for something. Thorndike, one of 
the men who figured prominently in this adaptation, and the 
man into whose hands was given the preparation of the tests 
for entrance to Columbia University, while acknowledging the 
large possibility for error in the results obtained through the use 
of tests for general intelligence, still holds that ^The test score 
may always be of great value, since it is a clear addition to the 
available impressionistic knowledge; it taps a new source of 
information.” 
A few of the tests in which most faith is placed may be added 
here. They are of such rank as to have been closely patterned 
after in the Army. Reference to the army tests can only be 
