RS&A Visual Acuity Assessment

Is your agency planning on hiring a trainee to fill a vacant latent print examiner position? How do you know if they have the ability or skillset to do the job? An applicant for this type of position must be able to discriminate between minute differences in forms, shapes, and details to succeed in this business. It can be extremely frustrating to hire someone for a position only to find out a year into training that they simply cannot do the job. Most agencies do not have the time nor the resources to make this kind of hiring blunder. So, why not take the guess work out of the process?

Visual acuity testing is remarkably effective for assessing these abilities and will provide critical information to assist in the hiring decision. It takes a tremendous amount of research and effort to put a test of this caliber together and the only way to validate this kind of test is by putting examiners through an actual training program. It takes time and resources, something most agencies have little of. It is for this reason that RS&A has created and validated a test to help you take the guess work out of the hiring process. A copy of the validation study is available upon request.

This test has been designed to fairly evaluate your applicant’s visual acuity skill set. The skills being assessed in this one-hour twenty minute test include the ability to mentally rotate, inspect, and modify an image; the ability to determine differences in curvatures, widths, details, distortion, and orientation of images; and the ability to distinguish between different color shades that are commonly seen in latent print casework.

RS&A has extensive experience conducting visual acuity testing, and we have learned that the results of this testing have a tremendous predictive value on their success in a latent print training program. If they score well on the assessment and are highly motivated, then you should expect them to be a valuable asset to your team. Conversely, poor performance is a reliable indicator that you should move on to another applicant. It’s really that simple!

• Validated web-based visual acuity assessment.
• Assessment which is designed to be proctored by administering agency.
• Auto scoring for instant assessment score upon submission.
• Instant detailed applicant report sent via email.

Sample score sheet — 100 points

Section 1-A consist of 24 Answers X .5 Points = Total of 12 Points
Section 1-B consist of 20 Answers X .5 Points = Total of 10 Points
Section 1-C consist of 1 Answer X 1 Point = Total of 1 Point.
Section 1-D consist of 1 Answer X 1 Point = Total of 1 Point.
Section 2 consists of 39 Answers X 1 Points = Total of 39 Points.
Section 3A consists of 20 Answers X 1 Points = Total of 20 Points.
Section 3B consists of 8 Answers X 1 Points = Total of 8 Points.
Section 4 consists of 9 Answers X 1 Points = Total of 9 Points.

TOTAL SCORE = 100 Points — Excellent Visual Acuity Ability

Visual acuity ability scale

90–100 — Excellent Ability
80–89 — Average Ability
70–79 — Below Average Ability
69 or less — Poor Ability

Detailed assessment PDF report

• Each applicant submission will generate an assessment report in PDF format.
• Each assessment report will be emailed immediately to the proctor email address.

RS&A visual acuity assessment content

• Section 1-A will test the applicant’s ability to discern an array of color shades that are seen in latent print casework.
• Section 1-B will test the applicant’s ability to recognize different levels of line thickness and curvature.
• Section 1-C will test the applicant’s ability to recognize slight changes in angles and areas.
• Section 1-D will test the applicant’s ability to recognize image orientation and rotation.
• Section 2-A will test the applicant’s ability to filter out background noise.
• Section 2-B will test the applicant’s ability to process distortion in an image.
• Section 2-C will test the applicant’s ability to look for and orient a target group.
• Section 3A will test the applicant’s ability to distinguish commonalities and differences between similar images.
• Section 3B will test the applicant’s ability to distinguish the differences between two similar images.
• Section 4 will test the applicant’s ability to find target groups in one image and locate them on a larger image.

RS&A Visual Acuity Assessment Validation Study (.PDF)