A Scientific Approach to Assessing Aptitudes

The Highlands Ability Battery (HAB) is rooted in over a century of research. First administered by the Highlands Company in 1992, the instrument was founded on the work of Johnson O’Connor, a Harvard graduate and research scientist who devoted his life to the study of human engineering.

Johnson O’Connor determined that every individual is born with a unique pattern of natural abilities that stabilize around the age of 14 and remain relatively unchanged over time. Through the Human Engineering Laboratory that he created in 1922, O’Connor developed a battery of tests or worksamples designed to identify specific aptitudes related to certain characteristics on the job.

A commitment to ongoing research continues today through the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation (JOCRF) which established and maintains the reliability and construct validity of the internal characteristics of the battery of tests- i.e., that the worksamples measure the aptitudes they are intended to measure and how they apply to specific career paths.

Unlike many other assessments and inventories, the HAB does not rely on self-reporting. Rather, through a series of worksamples, it measures a person’s innate abilities based on performance using objective rather than subjective measures—a distinction worth noting as one’s perception of self (or desired perception of self) can render responses easy to manipulate and therefore, less reliable.