Your general IQ score is given to you free and a complete intelligence profile is offered for a small fee. Goleman s Emotional IQ test is simply ten multiple-choice items asking how you would cope with specific problem situations. After answering, you are told the right answers and invited to buy Goleman s book if you want more social-emotional smarts. Most importantly, keep in mind all the other information a therapist would utilize in making a diagnosis and understanding the problem situation. She or he would carefully consider all your strengths and current symptoms as well as all your recent and long-term history, including your family history, medical history, social history, school and work history and so on.
Diagnosticians often interview parents, spouse, and others as well.
They, of course, ask questions and attend carefully to your comments and behavior during an interview before making a tentative diagnosis. So, as of today, a few brief tests, such as the ones online, are a small part of a careful diagnostic evaluation of your problems. Researchers George Dudley and Bill Gordon at Behavioral Science Research Press have also voiced warnings about current online testing. Certainly, invalid test results could be believed, quite influential, and very harmful. Before you change your life plans based on the results of just one or two brief tests, investigate the quality of the tests and the test makers.