Measuring Abilities in OaSIS

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  • This topic has 4 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 1 month ago by Francois Paradis.
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  • November 5, 2024 at 4:12 pm #2073
    Francois Paradis
    Participant

    As many of you know by now, the Career Handbook has been replaced by the OaSIS, and while many VE practitioners have been relying on the Career Handbook to assess their clients’ Abilities, it will no longer be updated by ESDC. Although the OaSIS provides a wealth of occupational information, it uses criterion-based scales rather than normed based, as in the Career Handbook. As such, current ability tests in use with the Career Handbook cannot be used with abilities in OaSIS. One of the outcome of this issue has been that many VE practitioners have continued relying on the Career Handbook for Ability testing. The situation is somewhat similar to the United States, where many vocational evaluators still rely on the DOT, rather than its replacement, the O*NET.

    To address this issue, I have facilitated a series of consultations between ESDC and IRP Canada, a publisher of psychometric tests. This publisher, among other tests, offers the CFIT, an excellent aptitude test battery, which has been part of my toolbox for a number of years now. The objective of these consultations was to determine if there is a way to adapt the CFIT to the OaSIS and I am happy to report that the answer is yes!

    ESDC was able to provide IRP Canada with a distribution of OaSIS ability scores for all occupations in the Canadian working population, as per the census 2021. This will allow IRP Canada to bridge the normed based test scores to criterion ratings found in OaSIS. IRP Canada is currently hard at work to adapt its CFIT test and expects to make it available to the public sometime around February 2025. To my knowledge, this is the first Ability test that will allow us to compare test scores to occupational requirements in the OaSIS and as far as I am concerned, it is a huge step in the right direction! I will keep you updated here as I learn more over the coming months.

    Please take the time to share your experience of aptitude testing in your practice and how you have been able to integrate OaSIS data Into your vocational assessments.

    • This topic was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by 3986.
    November 13, 2024 at 12:24 pm #2078
    Jennifer Griffiths
    Participant

    Thanks for updating us on this important work Francois!  I have been using the OaSIS skills information in TSA reports.  I look at the skills ratings listed for each job in the composite profile, and pick from there the highest skills requirements for the position.  If there is an area that the person has little skill in, and OaSIS matches that for that skill, I may report on that as well.  I am sure there are many other ways to maximize the use of OaSIS in our Vocational Evaluation work and look forward to other professional’s suggestions and practices.

    Kind Regards,

     

    Jennifer Griffiths

    November 13, 2024 at 1:32 pm #2079
    Francois Paradis
    Participant

    Thank you Jennifer,

    I am glad to hear you are making good use of the OaSIS data. When identifying suitable occupations, do you use the OaSIS advanced search function or do you conduct your search manually? The advanced search has a learning curve to it but is a viable method to sift through the 900 occupations and do multifactorial searches.

    One feature that is not available and that would be useful for TSA’s is the ability to create a composite profile of a person’s skills, interests and knowledge, based on their work history. I think that is something CAVEWAS could request from ESDC. It would be a fairly simple thing for them to do. Alternatively, I think it may be a worthwhile project for CAVEWAS to fund privately, if necessary.

     

    November 14, 2024 at 8:03 pm #2080
    Heather Mallard
    Participant

    Hi Francois, thank you very much for this update! I was actually just speaking to my Manager about this the other day and was wondering how to get updates on the status of this transition. Would you mind if I share this information with my co-workers and perhaps direct them to this post for comment, if desired?

    November 14, 2024 at 10:25 pm #2083
    Francois Paradis
    Participant

    Yes of course, go ahead!

     

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