Personal Profile Analysis (PPA)
Get insights into behavior at work
- Recruit smarter with people science
- Improve interactions across teams
- Increase engagement and collaboration
- Build a vibrant team culture
- Mitigate and resolve conflict
- Reduce staff attrition
What our happy customers say
The Thomas Personal Profile Analysis (PPA)
The Personal Profile Analysis measures your strengths, your room to grow and your preferred communication style. Use it with your team and improve communication, wellbeing and productivity.
How Thomas' Personal Profile Analysis (PPA) works
It only takes eight minutes to get accurate insights into how people behave at work with Thomas.
8 Minute Assessment
You’ll get accurate insights into how each candidate behaves, communicates and what motivates them in the workplace. Factor in soft skills and hire someone who is the perfect fit for the role.
Detailed Profile
Our science-backed PPA test gives insight on a person’s strengths, their communication style, what motivates them, and how they react to risk and conflict.
Deep Insight
Use the insights our platform provides to make smarter hiring choices, move people into roles where they’d shine and really support your team by understanding them a bit better.
Assessment Information
- Assessment type: Behavioral profile
- Format: 24 questions
- Time to complete: 8 minutes
- Training required: None
Validation:
We’re registered with the British Psychological Society and audited against technical criteria established by the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations. This means our platform is built from science you can trust.
Read a sample candidate profile to see Thomas in action
Using the PPA has saved the business thousands by helping them to choose candidates who fit the roles better, stay longer, and are more productive.
We’ll help build a better team
The Thomas Teams Audit gives you insight that helps your teams perform to their maximum ability, and ensure that they are motivated and working towards a common set of goals – whether in a face-to-face, physical or hybrid environment.
Teams, used in conjunction with our behavior assessment, will help your teams to understand their combined strengths, limitations and the value that the team brings to the organization. The insights it gives can:
Boost the performance of your team through more effective management
Help you to set a template of the ideal culture, roles and leadership style that your team needs to deliver its objectives
Thomas Teams provides you with a comprehensive report that can answer many questions such as:
- What role does each person play within the team?
- Where are the possible areas of limitation in the team?
- How can you address those limitations
- Are you playing to the strengths of each team member?
- Where could conflict be occurring?
- Is there a skills gap, and are there any training needs?
- What leadership style will best motivate and inspire the team towards high performance?
The theory
Our PPA assessments that create each Thomas profile are built from the scientific DISC theory of William Moulton Marston, developed for the workplace by Dr Thomas Hendrickson.
Our PPA measure how someone sees themselves responding to situations in the workplace. Answering questions written by our psychologists, you’ll be able to see any patterns in your answers and your individual behavioral preferences and where it sits within the DISC theory: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance.
Find out how to get deep, actionable insights into your people to create high performing teams and improve business performance
Format
You’ll be asked to choose two trait adjectives out of four, one that is most like you and one least like you. It uses an ipsative referencing method, which means your answers are compared to yourself, rather than a comparison group. You’ll be given 24 questions and asked to choose between 96 words.
Our PPA assessment is available electronically or in paper-and-pencil format. It is suitable for anyone with a reading age of 11+ and who is fluent in English, including those whose first language isn’t English.
Reliability & validity
Our assessments undergo rigorous scientific tests to determine its reliability and validity as a psychological assessment. Our assessments are registered with the British Psychological Society, which means they’re audited against the technical criteria established by the European Standing Committee on Tests and Testing, part of the European Federation of Psychologists' Associations.
Our in-house psychologists continually undergo psychometric research with the PPA and have collaborated with the Psychometrics Centre at Cambridge University. If you’d like to support our continuous development programs, get in touch with our psychology team.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Thomas PPA?
Thomas’ Personality Profile Analysis (PPA) is a personality test which enables employers to evaluate a candidates’ character traits in a more in-depth way to determine whether they will be a suitable fit for a role as well as how they prefer to communicate with others.
How does the Thomas PPA work?
The Thomas PPA is a forced-choice questionnaire where candidates are shown short statements and are asked to choose two trait adjectives from a list of four, one ‘most like’ and one ‘least like’ them. An individual’s choice of adjectives reflects their behavioral tendencies and personality in a workplace setting.
From this, a personal profile is created around four traits: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance. These traits are ranked in order to form one’s unique character. The Thomas PPA only takes 8 minutes to complete.
The PPA and DISC theory
The PPA is based on Marston’s DISC theory which classifies an individual’s behavioral preferences and splits them into four factors: Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness (S), and Compliance (C).
While most people will show all four of these behavior patterns at times, an individual will display one or more of them consistently in the workplace. This is because each person develops a behavioral style which places more emphasis on one preference and less emphasis on others.
What are the benefits of the PPA to an organization?
The PPA provides a comprehensive assessment of an individual including their fears, motivators, values and behavioral style. It gives you insights into how someone is likely to perform under pressure, how they modify their behavior in their current job and any frustrations or problems they may be facing.
The PPA can also be used as a tool to back up your recruitment decisions and identify behaviors that were not shown at the interview stage. Since the PPA makes employers aware of their employee’s work styles, it also improves people management through a greater understanding of why people behave the way they do.
