If you're interested in becoming a doctor, nurse, or allied health professional, you've probably heard of the CASPer test. According to their website, situational judgment tests, or SJTs like CASPer, are immune to the effects of coaching. Obviously, the test prep companies would disagree. So, what does the literature actually say about whether or not you can improve your score, and if you can, how do you actually go about doing so? Developed by a group of researchers from McMaster University, the computer-based assessment for sampling personal characteristics claims to be a test which scores applicants based on interpersonal skills like professionalism and ethics. Despite what either Altus Assessments or the test prep companies want you to believe, the literature isn't actually that clear on the benefits of preparation and coaching for situational judgment tests like CASPer. The first myth I'm going to dispel is the myth that you can't actually prepare. Now don't hate me and say oh I'm just taking the side of test prep companies. No, I actually just looked at the evidence myself and I have no affiliation with Altus Assessments or the test prep companies. But what they actually found was that when they recreated that high-stakes assessment like CASPer for students interested in applying to medical school in Belgium I think it was, what they were actually studying is whether or not paying for coaching specifically improved their score. The researchers were actually unable to separate the effects of self-preparation away from any of the scores that they gathered because in a high-stakes assessment like that, pretty much everyone is going to be doing some sort of preparation. Now, that study actually did show that individuals who were coached or who paid for coaching actually did have a higher score on average of about 0.5 standard deviations, which, depending on where you lie on the bell curve, may be even up to 20%. At the same time, all assessments would counter back and say, Yeah, we saw this increase in scores, but at the same time, that study was looking at a situational judgement test with close-ended responses, whereas CASPer is an SJT with open-ended responses. There are other studies which give some mixed results, but at the same time, it's very difficult to generalize studies that focus on psychology students who are paid $25 to take some random tests from an actual high-stakes assessment. where you as pre-medical students likely have stronger motivations to do well than the individuals in some psych lab. When I was an undergrad, I personally didn't pay for any coaching, but regardless of whether or not you plan to do so, I think there are four things that everyone taking the Casper test should know. Try and remember that usually policies are in place for a reason. As doctors, we're called to be stewards of a public health system, which in Canada means that there's limited dollars to go around, and we generally don't like to spend those dollars in an unfair way or in a way that advantages some people over others. In Canada, everybody has the same treatment. They drive them nuts if George got better health care than Sam did. That's not acceptable. If you're one of the people to give this man a refund, I understand where you're coming from. I genuinely do. But at the same time, I think it's important to think about how fair is that to other customers who come in and are forced to abide by store policy. And more importantly, how fair is that to the store in terms of its ability to provide work for its employees and toys to other customers? Ethical reasoning can get pretty interesting because there's usually no right or wrong, black or white answer. It's usually somewhere in the grey area. That being said, there is usually an answer that's easier to justify than the other one. So, for example, when I was taking the Casper test, I made sure to read all the questions first before starting to formulate my responses, because I noticed that when I did that, the authors would start to lead me down certain responses about 50% of the time, which gave me a clue as to what they thought. was the right answer quote-unquote. Going back to the example of the toy store refund, if you had read all the prompts first before starting to formulate any of your answers you would have noticed that the second prompt actually said if you had decided to abide by store policy how could you refuse the refund in a way that showed empathy for the customer. So, reading between the lines, they kind of want you to be able to say no in an empathetic way, which tells you that the answer to the first question was you probably shouldn't give this man a refund. The other benefit of reading all the questions first before you start responding is that it gives your response some sort of structure. No one wants to get caught in the trap of typing everything that you have to say under the first prompt and leaving the second and the third blank because oftentimes the way that you're going to think about the question and the things you want to say follow a logical order that the authors have thought about and you just have to put your ideas under the right subheading in order to get the points that you want to get. You'll notice if you look at some of the test prep company materials that they give these huge, really, really good but also terribly unrealistic responses in terms of their length and their depth and the amount of information they actually put into that response given the time constraints that you have. While it's important to acknowledge as many perspectives as you possibly can, what the people that are marking you on is more so your motivation for picking a decision. So, you can acknowledge all the perspectives in the world, but if you never tie that together with a statement like, ultimately I chose not to give this man a refund because… then you're probably not going to get as many points as you'd like. I really want to hammer this point home because it's probably the most important point of the entire video. So going back to the example of the toy refund, if I can continue to beat a dead horse… If I say something along the lines of, well, I do feel for this man's situation… But at the same time, assuming that he and his family are residents of Ontario, the cost of his child's healthcare is fully funded by the provincial government. So giving this man a refund actually wouldn't affect the ability of he and his family to pay for any prescription drugs that they may need. That sounds a lot better than saying something like, I will not give this man a refund because it's Thor policy and we don't violate Thor policy. At the same time it is important to show that you're not only thinking in one linear fashion and that you are open to other perspectives. So one really quick mental shortcut that I did when I was taking the test is as soon as I looked at the prompt I thought to myself okay what is the decision that I'm either gonna go with or I feel that the prompt is leading me down and then I would start by acknowledging the other perspective. So saying something along the lines of although I understand that a blah blah blah blah blah I would blah blah blah blah. So that was a kind of a way for me to show that I wasn't just a linear thinker but that I was open to other possibilities as well. A lot of the questions that you get are gonna be your typical interview questions. So things like tell me about a time where you used resilience and problem solving to get through a tough situation. The key here is that it's actually a little bit easier than an interview because you can sort of guess what they're gonna ask you based on the 12 characteristics on their website that they say that this test is meant to assess. One really high yield tip that I recommend to all of you is go through your CV or resume and map out experiences to each one of these 12 characteristics. The easy part about this is that each station in Casper is actually marked by a different radar which means that You can actually use the same story over and over and over again as long as you can find a way to spin it in a way that matches the attribute that the question is asking for. Guys, I want to give you all the information I possibly can because I remember when I was an undergrad, it was hard because I had no doctors in the family. So I had to kind of make my own connections and find the information that I was looking for all online. And I know how difficult that can be. So if you have any questions at all, just... Shoot me a comment below and I promise I'll get back to you in some way, shape or form, whether that's replying to you directly or making another video just like this one.