Frequently Asked Questions

Self-report personality questionnaires can be very valuable and can work. However, a potential problem with relying on this approach, especially when used to support high stakes recruitment is that candidates can easily fake or massage their responses to better fit the ideal candidate. Another problem is that everyone has blind spots and therefore error will creep in.  The Mosaic approach is to assess personality directly by getting respondents to complete tasks. This is based on research and therefore the results are validated and proven to be effective and accurate.

When a respondent completes the self-report questionnaire honestly and discerningly, then it also provides very useful information and can support the personality task approach. Even when we find that the results from the two approaches do not match up, the results can still be extremely useful.  How you might wonder? Well, the self-report result indicates how the individual sees themselves in terms of their behaviour and personality. Whereas, the task measures their true behaviours.  Therefore, this can highlight blind spots for individuals.

The Mosaic Personality tool has been carefully researched on large samples of people, and is also based on published academic research.  Your personality scores obtained from the “task” and “self-report” approaches will normally be very similar.  However, in some cases they will be different.

1. If your scores are different, firstly please look at the introductory section (with the self-perception scale) of your report.  This section describes the degree to which you have over-estimated or under-estimated your personality.

If you have a high score (9-10) in this section, it means that you tended to rate yourself favourably across the whole of the self-report questionnaire task  but your actual Mosiac behavioural tasks performance did not back this up.  You will likely see in your report a number of personality scales where you have rated yourself more highly than your task performance.  For most of these areas of your report, it is likely that the tasks score (T) is more accurate than your self-report score (S).

If you have a low score (1 – 2) in this section, it means that you tended to rate yourself less favourably across the whole self-report questionnaire  but your actual Mosaic tasks performance was more complementary.  You may have a tendency to be harsh on yourself and overly self-critical.  You will likely see in your report a number of personality scales where you have rated yourself lower than your task performance.  For most of these areas of your report, it is likely that the tasks score (T) is more accurate than your self-report score (S).

If you have a score in the range of 3 to 8, which is nearly 90% of people, please see the next explanation below.

2. If your scores are different for a particular personality scale or area, research indicates that the most likely explanation is a blind spot.  This may well be an area of your personality where your self-report score may not be accurate.  It may be out of date or your current situation may have changed you in some way that you were unaware of. It is likely that this is the explanation in the majority of cases.   However, there are other explanations:

• It is possible that your “tasks” performance simply reflected how you behaved in the moment or on the day you completed the tasks.  This may not be the “normal you”.  Questions you should consider include: Were you fully focused? free of interruptions? did you understand the instructions for each task?
• It may be that other psychological factors at this time may have affected your performance e.g. tiredness, a stressful situations Etc.

During the task activities no questions are asked about an individual’s personality. There are no opportunities for a candidate to distort their answers, deliberately or otherwise.  Instead Mosaic captures the real time behavioural reactions of a candidate as they complete each task.  It is very difficult for candidates to fake or distort their behaviour on multiple measures of task performance.  In addition, candidates are not aware of the aspects of personality that are being measured and so are not aware of what to distort.  The aspects of personality being measured are typically not obvious from the content of the tasks themselves.  When asked, participants have normally been unable to correctly identify them.

This is really down to preference, but from the feedback we have it seems so. Mosaic Tasks are designed to be engaging but the priority is to obtain a valid and reliable measure of personality. Therefore, the tasks are not games! In a survey of our volunteers eighty percent of volunteers found Personality Tasks enjoyable or very enjoyable to complete. Sixty percent of volunteers found Personality Questionnaires enjoyable or very enjoyable to complete. Here are some of the comments we received:

“I thought it was much better to complete tasks than answer questions because I always view the question as circumstantial and not a clean answer.”

“There was less struggle for me with the tasks as opposed to surveys. With surveys I often feel annoyed by not knowing where to rate myself. I find I can act or react differently depending on situations so assigning myself to a box without more context seems more arbitrary than completing a task.”

“With surveys, not that I did, but I find that people are more likely to rate what their ideal option is as opposed to an honest reflection of their personality. So I do not trust self-report survey.”

No.  The majority of people we survey after completing Mosaic were aged 45 and over. They were not experienced “gamers” or currently playing computer games on a regular basis.  Nevertheless 80% rated Mosaic tasks as enjoyable or very enjoyable to complete.

Mosaic tasks resemble simple puzzles and challenges rather than fast-moving gameplay, animation or cartoons. They are appropriate for all age groups and backgrounds.

Mosaic Assessments Ltd aims to provide access to our assessment to as wide a range of people as possible (including those with disabilities). We are continually reviewing how we provide our services in order to meet this aim. We use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2 requirements as a guide to how we do this.

After making various adaptions to our Mosaic Personality Tasks assessment we are largely in conformance with these standards and will continue to make adjustments as standards change. Examples of adjustments made include:

• Extra time to read text can be assigned to those who have dyslexia.
• Tasks were removed that had a reliance on image colour.
• There is no auditory or video-based material.
• Improved readability of text based on colours, font size and amount of information presented.

Due to the nature of the tasks and assessment however, some of the tasks require multiple images to be displayed on the screen at the same time. We encourage people with visual difficulties and impairments to complete the tasks on as large a screen as possible to ensure this does not impact performance. For those with significant visual impairments we can provide a customised version of the assessment.

Please see our shop on this site for up-to-date prices or email us at admin@mosaictasks.com.

These are the reports currently available. Examples of all of these reports can be downloaded from our web-site.

1. Personal Development Report: Based around the big 5 personality traits and 20 underlying facets with competency analysis and tips.
2. Candidate Report: Based around the big 5 personality traits and 20 underlying facets with tips.
3. Interview Reports: Provides analysis and interview questions around 12 competencies. Our Leadership version includes analysis of leadership derailers and situational leadership style.
4. Expert Reports: Based around the big 5 personality traits and 20 underlying facets with competency analysis. Our Leadership version includes analysis of leadership derailers and situational leadership style.
5. Leadership Development Report: Provides analysis & development tips using our unique leadership models and leadership competency model.
6. Safety Leadership Report: Provides analysis and development tips around 9 Safety Leadership competencies as well as role strengths.

Mosaic Tasks measures all the big 5 personality traits (Conscientiousness; Agreeableness; Emotional Steadiness; Openness to experience and Extraversion) and four associated facets for each trait. Please view our ‘report types‘ page to see what we measure in detail.

The approach used by Mosaic Tasks stems from research on objective testing originally completed in the 1950s and has continued since.  Behaviour is captured live as participants complete each task, and scored to produce personality information using algorithms derived from extensive research. Mosaic Tasks are based on a number of these studies but have been adapted for the web and subsequently tested and refined during a 3-year research project. All measures taken are ‘psychologically meaningful’. In other words, they are not accidental relationships found by artificial intelligence but the result of purposeful research.

It is not possible to give specific information about how each personality score is derived, as that could influence how participants approach the tasks. During the tasks thousands of data points are collected. These are based on your pattern of omissions, errors, correct answers, question attempts, problem solving etc. The unique Mosaic Tasks algorithm compares and contrasts these various data points in order to understand specific behaviour on each task. Any one personality measure is not based on only one task but from a range of measures taken across all the tasks.

The data centres we use are located in the UK. They are protected with several layers of security to prevent any unauthorized access to our servers and your data. Server room access is limited to certified employees and 24/7 security teams are prepared to respond to any situation. Internet communication to the Google Cloud infrastructure is encrypted in transit and access to sensitive data is protected by advanced tools like phishing-resistant Security Keys.

In addition we have:

• SSL encryption certificates on all our sites
• Multi-factor authentication required for our trusted admin users
• Automatic daily backups
• Site security and scans
• Sophisticated IDS/IPS systems which block malicious bots and attackers (Intrusion detection/prevention systems).
• ModSecurity is installed on our servers with update our security rules weekly.
• Run on Apache in a chrooted environment with suExec.
• Servers use the latest PHP 7 version with the latest security fixes.