The Hartman-Kinsel Profile is a set of five forced ranking tasks that is usually completed in less than 25 minutes. It consists of terms or phrases divided into five separate lists. For each list, the participant is asked to rank the 18 items or statements from “best” to “worst.” Each item is a formal representation of combinations of value that are defined by Dr. Robert S. Hartman's Formal Axiology.

The Hartman part of the profile (Tasks B & C) was formulated in the mid-1950s by Dr. Robert S. Hartman and his colleagues. And has since been translated into more than 5 languages and is used in clinical Psychology, Psychiatry, Business, and Government (personnel arenas).

Dr. Robert Kinsel Smith developed the Kinsel portion of the profile (Tasks A, D, and E) in the mid-1980s. Following the same principles of Formal Axiology, it serves as a tandem check for the participant's responses to Tasks B & C. This insures that “item reactions” on the Hartman section do not skew the scoring for any participant.

What the Hartman-Kinsel Profile Measures

The Hartman-Kinsel Profile measures the patterns and clarity of thinking of the participant as well as the effects that stress has had on a person's ability to think about different things, how clearly a person's "Value Vision" is developed, what dimensions a person is most and least attentive to, and the different balances in a person's thinking.

This forced ranking of representative statements distinguishes individuals' values in terms of intrinsic, extrinsic and systemic dimensions. The intrinsic dimension involves singularity and uniqueness and is required for empathy and self-esteem. The extrinsic dimension involves the ability to deal with the abstraction of properties and relative comparisons and is required for practical, social and political thinking and for personal confidence and competitiveness. The systemic dimension involves formal constructs and absolutes and is required for planning, measurement, and one's own self-image and standards.
More About the Three Dimensions of Value

Uses and Benefits of the Hartman-Kinsel Profile

As with other instruments, the Hartman-Kinsel Profile has specific and particular uses in the marketplace. Its distinctiveness is threefold:

1. The words and phrases on the test are formal representations so the person taking the test cannot figure out what is being measured.
2. Because of the simplicity of the instrument, persons taking the test do not experience traumas that often accompany other tests.
3. Little skill and time are required to administer and take the test.

Bottom line benefits from these three features are that: it is almost impossible for the participant to cheat on the test, the test does not cause the participant to become anxious or troubled and little expense is incurred for the administration of the test.

Because the Hartman-Kinsel Profile identifies a person's Value Structure, the results are useful in many different ways:

• Greater self-understanding
• Designing of training that addresses the sources of the weaknesses and strengths
• Motivation and drive source identification
• Team compatibility and sources of "Natural Stresses"
• Partnership compatibility and sources of stresses
• Vocational counseling
• Problem employee counseling

Presently businesses are using different reports available exclusively through Clear Direction, Inc. that have been developed from the Hartman-Kinsel Profile for the pre-selection and selection of employment candidates in: sales, customer service, management, and professional services (CPAs, Lawyers, etc.). Since November 1998, these reports are available exclusively through International Risk Management Institute. The program is called the Zero Risk Hiring System.
More Information on The ZeroRisk Hiring System

The Hartman-Kinsel Profile is also used in the assessment of present employees and groups of employees for: team building, personal and managerial growth and development, designing and measuring training specific to the needs of a group, team design - assembling a team for a specific function, monitoring acclimation of new employees, partnership maximization, and problem employee counseling and training.
More Information on Clear Direction's Professional Products

Unique Characteristics of the Hartman-Kinsel Profile

• The Hartman-Kinsel Profile is reliable and proven to be stable for a three-month interval of time. For a test's scores to be reliable it must be proven to be so over extended periods of time. The Hartman-Kinsel Profile's reliability has been proven over periods of months and years.
• The Hartman-Kinsel Profile measures the sources of behavior and attitudes, not the behaviors or attitudes themselves. Since the Hartman-Kinsel Profile is based on Formal Axiology, it measures peoples' thinking structures. These structures are the sources of personality characteristics, behavioral choices, and the mental maps for decision-making.
• The isomorphic relationships of mathematical systems and the dimensional characteristics of the profile make it objective and easy to score. This objectivity of the Hartman-Kinsel Profile enables researchers and human development specialists to model and objectify thinking, behavior and decision-making with mathematical models. These mathematical systems provided a system that is void of subjective contamination that is a hurdle for users of psychological instruments.

Three True Cases - The Hartman-Kinsel Profile In Action

Company A had an employee who had been unable to work effectively with peers and subordinates for the past two years. The head of the division agreed to a team-building workshop that included profiling the members with individual reviews of the profiles. The team building session, based on the information gained from the profile, resulted in the team becoming more cohesive and the specific person coming to a realization of what he was doing that was preventing him from being effective with his peers and subordinates. Since the sessions, the employee has become more effective at working with others and has been able to target his attentions toward genuine improvement.

Company B had a new person become head of the division. This person had thinking patterns that prevented him from genuinely valuing one of their most productive managers. The new head agreed to have a team building retreat utilizing the Hartman-Kinsel Profiles. One result of the profile information was the boss gaining a new perspective and appreciation for the good manager. This new perspective enabled the boss to work effectively with the manager.

Company C was considering hiring a certain person for a sales position. The candidate's Hartman-Kinsel Profile indicated that he would have a difficult time handling rejection at this point in his life. The interviewer, having the profile information, was able to pursue a line a questioning concerning the candidate's ability to handle rejection. At first the candidate gave general, text-book type answers that glossed over the real issues. When the interviewer said that the test indicated that the candidate had a low score in his ability to handle rejection, the candidate opened up and revealed a lot of personal pain that had resulted from his past position. The company hired the candidate with full knowledge of what condition the person was in and was able to design a temporary work scenario for the person to get back on his feet.
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Validation Studies

Since the formulation of the Hartman Value Profile in the 1950's, Axiologists in the United States, Mexico, and Sweden have tested the Profile on numerous occasions. The test-retest reliability of the Hartman Value Profile was established by two different studies (Davis, 1983, and Value, Inc., 1987) and was found to be reliable with extremely high significance (r=.974, p<.001). The construct validation was proven by Dr. Charles McDonald of the Institute for the Study of Human Values in 1987 and was found to have a confidence level of 99.9% for ANOVA, Page's Test, and Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance. Dr. Leon Pomeroy and John Davis (1982) established concurrent validity with correlations of more than 40 items at confidence levels ranging from .04 to .0001. The benchmarks used in this study were the 16PF, the MMPI, the CAQ, the CMI, the PBI and the ALI (published in the Second International Conference on the 16PF Test, 1982 Proceedings, Institute for Personality and Ability Testing, Inc., Champaign, IL, pp. 117-122). Drs. Garwood and Austin confirmed the construct and concurrent validity of Hartman A and B establishing a confidence of .001 with a p=.911, indicating no significant difference between individual items. Their work correlated the Hartman Value Profile to the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values, the Rokeach Value Survey, and Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development. Dr. Robert Kinsel Smith determined criterion validity in four different studies from 1989 through 1993. The Hartman Value Profile was proven to be valid in its determination of customer service and management characteristics necessary for success. Value, Inc. demonstrated sales criterion validity in 1987. Kinsel Enterprises, Inc. proved predictive validity in 1996 to a confidence greater than 99.5%.
More About the Validation Studies

Revised Task B

In June, 2001, Dr. Robert Kinsel Smith began the process of rewriting five items on Task B of the Hartman-Kinsel Profile. Clear Direction and Zero Risk HR had faced resistance from potential clients because some of the statements on Task B were considered to be offensive or out of date. Dr. Smith rewrote the statements and Zero Risk HR assembled a group of 100 people to serve as participants in the validation study of the Revised Task B. The Revised Task B was found to be statistically the same as the original Task B with a confidence greater than 95%.
Download the Task B Revision Study