The Wonderlic Personnel Test (also known as a Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test) was created in 1936 by E.F. Wonderlic, who was at the time a graduate student at Northwestern University. The test was originally designed to test the overall aptitude of potential employees for certain jobs or tasks. The test is sometimes called a “quick IQ test” because of the short 12-minute time limit placed on the test. While it is not the same as an IQ test, it does focus on determining overall cognitive abilities in the areas of math, vocabulary, and reasoning.
While the original test has undergone many changes, including a revision in 2007 to update the questions to those more relevant to the 21st century – the main aim and the format of the test has remained largely unchanged. A number of different versions of the test have been developed to ascertain a wide range of qualities, such as personal traits, skills, cognitive ability, personality and even behavioral liability.
Two of the more notable organizations that regularly use some version of Wonderlic Personnel Tests are the US Military and the NFL. During WWII, the US Navy began using Wonderlic tests to identify individuals possessing the right traits and skill sets to be pilots and navigators. In the 1970’s, Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry began to use Wonderlic tests to help evaluate player performance and the test is still used today as a part of the NFL combine. In fact, a simplified version of the test is also included in more recent versions of the Madden NFL video games.