Police Personality Test Preparation Online

What's Included

• Full-length, 233-question professional pre-employment personality test
• Detailed report, analysis of 50 traits seen on popular employment personality tests
• Adaptive reports to your specific position
• The complete "How to pass a personality test" guide
• Secured payment
• Exclusive to JobTestPrep
• Immediate online access

 

About

A psychological or personality test is often one of the last steps in the police recruitment process. (Note: that this can vary between different departments.) Our assessment gives insight into your attitudes and behaviors, ensuring that you match up to law enforcement professionals. By practicing for your psychological exam prior to the actual testing date, you will become familiar with the format, questions, and answering styles found on the real test. 

What's on the Police Psychological Test?

The aim of the police personality test is to measure a variety of job-related behaviors and personality traits. 

✽ These tests consist of at least 100 questions which you will need to answer within a very short time limit.

✽ The time limit is typically around 15 minutes. 

✽ Questions on the police personality exam are standardized and formatted as either paper & pencil or computer-based.

✽ The police personality test questions delve into your personal lifestyle, behavior, and attitudinal attributes. In other words, this test measures your workplace, personality, motivations, preferences, attitudes, interests, and values. 

Police personality exams are comprised of short statements, each followed by multiple-choice responses. These responses house a five-point agreement scale from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. Look carefully at the response order, as some tests place “strongly agree” first and other exams place it last. 

Note: Keep in mind that many of the questions are re-worded several times throughout the test. The purpose of this is to see whether you will be consistent with your answers.

What are Police Psychological Tests Looking for? 

Below you will find information pertaining to the qualities being looked for in police personality test questions: 

Traits Predictive of Law Enforcement Job Performance 

The vast majority of police departments utilize the Big Five personality factors as indicators of the applicants most able and willing to carry out the responsibilities of public safety positions. This five-factor analysis includes:

1. Extroversion – dominant, energetic, socially interactive, talkative 
2. Agreeableness – sociable, sensitive, emotionally intelligent, friendly, kind, compassionate, cooperative, sympathetic 
3. Emotional Stability – self-confident, ability to adjust to changing circumstances, emotionally positive 
4. Conscientiousness – possessing integrity, dependable, thorough 
5. Openness to Experiences – flexible, creative, possessing wide-ranging interests

The sub-factors for each trait remain constant regardless of the employment field. However, the weight given to individual traits varies in accordance with job requirements.

Note: Conscientiousness (dependability) is considered to be the most important factor in predicting job performance across many fields, including law enforcement.

Some police personality exams focus on a more detailed set of 15 behavioral traits, including:

Taking personal responsibility	Emotional resilience	Taking charge of victims, witnesses, and suspects
Teamwork	Independence	Acceptance of the views of other individuals
Desire for achievement	Self-confidence	Self-awareness
Logical analysis of situations	Consideration and sensitivity to others	Compliance with rules and regulations
Stress tolerance	Desire to support and assist	Attention to detail

Other police departments expand upon the Big Five to include: 

Dependability	Impulse control	General intelligence	Motivation to enter the law enforcement field
Judgement	Ability to deal with supervision	Prior drug use	Honesty & integrity
Personal bias or lack of bias	Stress tolerance	Reasonable courage	Ability to perform tedious tasks

 

By practicing for your personality exam beforehand, you will be able to pinpoint your own strengths and weaknesses. This, in turn, will allow you to focus your preparation efforts in those weak areas thus improving your chances of a better test outcome.

Why Should I Practice for my Police Personality Test?

One of the main reasons you should practice for your police personality test is to build familiarity to boost your confidence. Becoming familiar with the test format, concepts, questions, and answering styles helps to eliminate the element of surprise. Another reason to practice is due to the trickiness of the exam itself. Most providers of police personality exams want you to think that there are no right or wrong answers, however, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The purpose of stating this in the test instructions is to make you feel more at ease and ready to answer each question without too much forethought.  

Now, there is nothing inherently wrong about answering these questions truthfully, however, without any prior experience with this sort of test it is easy to trip yourself up and accumulate extreme responses. These, of course, are things you should avoid doing during such an exam. Another advantage of practicing prior to your test day is that it allows you to review your own predicted score. This way, you will be able to focus more of your preparation efforts on your weaker traits, thus improving your chances of being selected for the role.

How Can I Prepare for my Police Personality Test? 

An estimated 90% of law enforcement agencies use police personality tests as part of the recruitment process. Not only do these tests help law enforcement agencies find desirable candidates for police officer roles, they also help to eliminate less desirable candidates who may not possess the necessary skills to be given a badge, gun, and authority.   

We have created the PrepPack™ on this page to ensure your ability to understand what each question is asking you so that you can avoid answering differently for re-stated questions, so as to not accumulate too many extreme answers.  

JobTestPrep's practice materials are designed to enhance your understanding of the traits being referenced on police personality test questions. Our preparation package includes a study guide, question and answer analysis, practice exams, and helpful testing strategies. By using all the materials within this practice pack, you will be able to boost your understanding of the exam, learn how to answer each question properly, and know where to focus your preparation efforts.  

 

Police Personality Test: What to Do & What to Avoid?

There are many things you should do when taking your police personality test as well as many things you should avoid. The list we have compiled below includes invaluable advice for passing your upcoming exam: 

Do... 

• Practice. This will allow you to get used to the questions you are sure to encounter, as well as improve your time management and answering speed. Practicing also gives you a chance to review and become familiar with the test format, thus giving you an advantage over other applicants.  
• Read the instructions carefully. Even if the instructions tell you there are no right or wrong answers, this is not true. Being a selection tool, the way you answer a certain question on a personality test can be detrimental to your overall profile.  
• Think like a police officer. Each question on the police personality test is designed to evaluate a specific personality trait. Think of what might be expected of you in each of the situations being presented and answer accordingly.  
• The personality tests administered to police officer hopefuls have the ability to track whether you are really being truthful or not. If a trend of dishonesty is detected during the test, you run the risk of invalidating the entire assessment. This could quash your chances of landing the role you are applying for. In other words, consistency is key.  
• Be decisive. Another quality being measured by the police personality test is your ability to be decisive. Stand your ground when taking this test and avoid frequent extreme and middle ground answers. 
• Show that you are right for the job. Remember, police work entails both working in a dynamic environment and many hours performing administration tasks. Be sure to show that you are right for the job in both ways.  

Don’t… 

• Accumulate too many extreme answers. These can be detrimental to your overall personality profile, whether they be positive or negative. Too many extreme answers (strongly agree/strongly disagree) can demonstrate a nature of inflexibility in certain areas. 
• Panic! One of the main side effects of taking a personality test is anxiety. If you have practiced beforehand, this should not be an obstacle to your success.  
• Become discouraged. If you don’t meet one agency’s standard, it doesn’t mean another agency can’t hire you. Just make sure that you get enough practice to understand what each of the questions is asking on the actual test and do your best! 

Tips for Passing your Police Personality Test 

• Practice. This will allow you to get used to the questions you are sure to encounter as well as improve your time management and answering speed. Practicing also gives you a chance to review and become familiar with the test format, thus giving you an advantage over other applicants.  

• Answer honestly. The personality tests administered to police officer hopefuls have the ability to track whether you are really being truthful or not. If a trend of dishonesty is detected during the test, you run the risk of invalidating the entire assessment. This could quash your chances of landing the role you are applying for. In other words, consistency is key.  

• Try not accumulate too many extreme answers. These can be detrimental to your overall personality profile whether they be positive or negative. Too many extreme answers (strongly agree/strongly disagree) can demonstrate a nature of inflexibility in certain areas. 

• Don’t get discouraged. If you don’t meet one agency’s standard, it doesn’t mean another agency can’t hire you. Just make sure that you get enough practice to understand what each of the questions is asking on the actual test and do your best!