Q. How is ‘consistency’ calculated?
Answer: The mental conundrum that people have with consistency scores is, “How can there be low consistency, ie. high variation, when the average scores are all relatively high?”. The explanation is actually quite simple. Basically, you can have a number of items where the scores are quite far apart, but the average still ends up being close to four.
Consider the small example below:
|Question||Score 1||Score 2||Average|
As you can see in this example, there is quite a large amount of variation in the scores, but the average is still four, which is relative high.
Also, the consistency score that is depicted in the reports is a benchmarked score, meaning that the graph is not depicting how consistent the scores are, but how consistent they are relative to the rest of the norm group. Basically, when we calculate benchmarks, we also calculate the consistency score for every single set of responses that is included in the norm group and then create a percentile map based on those scores, which is what we use to figure out the benchmarked score for consistency of responses for an individual report.
Q. Why isn’t the benchmark rectangle sitting above the “Average/Typical” label rather than the “More Than Others” label?
Answer: The rectangle that appears just above the “More Than Others” label indicates the range at which the middle 50% of participants have been rated. That is, the left hand edge of the rectangle represents the cut-off for the 25th percentile and the right hand edge of the rectangle represents the cut-off for the 75th percentile. This means that any score that results in a line that ends to the left of the rectangle was below the 25th percentile.
The reason is because most people overestimate the EQ of others, that is, most people see others as demonstrating EI behaviours better than average or typical, thus why the rectangle range tends to start around 3.5 and go through to 4.5. This is not just a phenomena of the Genos instrument: it’s a phenomena of all behaviour-based competency 360s, including other EI instruments. It’s also a phenomenon known to occur for IQ as well, although there are also cultural and gender differences in this area making it a very complex academic subject.
Having said all that, it doesn’t mean that people don’t get rated as demonstrating EI “Average” through to “Significantly Less than Others”. It’s just that only 25% of the population tend to get viewed that way.
Q. Is it possible to get access to the answers supplied for a Genos Self-assessment?
Answer: The report actually contains the numeric responses, so all the student really needs to know is the response scale and they can work out what their answers were. The response scale for the importance questions is:
1 – Not at all important
2 – Slightly important
3 – Fairly important
4 – Important
5 – Highly important
The response scale for the demonstration questions is:
1 – Significantly less than (others)
2 – Less than (others)
3 – Average/typical
4 – More than (others)
5 – Significantly more than (others)
So if the result in the ‘I’ column for an item is 4, it means the student rated that behaviour “Important”. And if the result in the ‘D’ column for an item is 2, it means the student believes they demonstrate this behaviour “Less than others”.
Genos Surveys Administration
Q. Will emails be sent to Participants if Raters have been pre-loaded?
Answer: Emails are only generated for a participant if they have an outstanding nominations task, self assessment task or rater assessment task.
Examples of when emails will be sent to participants:
- Some raters have been entered for but the minimum number in one or more categories has not been reached.
- Self assessment option has been enabled, in which case the participant will have a Pending self assessment.
- Some other participant nominates that participant to rate them.
Pretty much the only time a Welcome email will not be sent to a participant is when that participant is in a 180 or 360 group that does not have a self assessment task and their rater nominations are complete. Pending Engagement Survey tasks do not generate emails, nor do pending Benchmarking Questionnaires Surveys.
So as long as the self assessment option isn’t enabled, then yes, you can load up raters for the participants and the participants won’t receive emails, unless, of course, those participants are raters for other participants, in which case they will receive emails and they will be able to see their nominations tasks and they will be able to click into them and see who has been nominated for them.
Q. What should I do if a participant has reported they are being asked to provide login details to access their survey tasks?
Answer: Sometimes if a link is clicked from an email the default browser will only copy part of the full URL, leading the participant to a log in screen because they were not automatically logged in. Please advise the participant to try copying the full URL and pasting it into their browser. It should instantly log them in, showing their outstanding survey tasks.
Q. What are the timezone settings in Genos Surveys?
Answer: A survey group’s time zone is based on the administrator/contact person’s time zone. If the administrator doesn’t have a time zone set (although this is unlikely) it will use the time zone of the person who created the survey group.
Survey emails using [end_date] will automatically default to the survey group’s end time, unless the recipient logs in or has logged in previously, in which case the end time will be conveyed in their own time.
Hence, in the case that recipients are new participants, all their emails will use the survey group end time. The implication of this is:
- If their time zone is ahead of the survey group administrator’s time zone, they will have more time to complete the survey than initially communicated. If they complete only some of their tasks, all reminder emails thereafter will contain the updated end date conveyed in their own time zone.
- If their time zone is behind the survey group administrator’s time zone, they will have less time to complete the survey than initially communicated. However, this will not be an issue because of the 12-hour grace period (allowing participants to complete tasks) applicable after the group end time.
Survey emails using the [end_date_tz] placeholder will include the end date, time and the time zone. This will also automatically default to the survey group’s end time, unless the recipient logs in or has logged in previously, in which case the end time will be conveyed in their own time, indicating their time zone (in any reminder emails sent to them thereafter).
Q. Why can surveys only been kept open for a couple of months?
Answer: There are several reasons why a survey should only be kept open for a couple of months.
The most important reason is that a report, especially an EI report, should show a “snapshot in time”. That is, it should represent the opinions of the raters within a reasonably narrow time period so that the participant understands that this is how they were coming across at that specific time. If the timespan in which the data is collected is too large, there is more of a chance that some significant events may occur between some raters responding and other raters responding, thereby impacting the scientific “purity” of the report.
The second very important reason is that Genos Surveys will keep sending emails to participants until the end date of the survey is reached. Creating surveys that have end dates way off into the future is an absolutely horrible idea because Genos Surveys will continue to send reminder emails to people with outstanding tasks until the end date. This has the dual effect of annoying raters whilst also having a negative impact on our email server’s spam reputation. And if the spam reputation of our email server gets degraded, this impacts the deliverability of emails for all other users of Genos Surveys.
Another thing people sometimes do is re-open a survey weeks after the survey has closed in order to try and obtain additional feedback for some participants. The risk here is that they might be inclined to send a report to a participant with one or two extra raters, which should not be done, as that can potentially impact the confidentiality of the additional rater(s). Also, the passage of time can make it quite difficult to keep track of which reports have already been sent and what the status of the reports were at that time, particularly in a larger survey, so re-opening an existing survey too far in the future exacerbates this issue and, once again, increases the risk that rater confidentiality might be negatively impacted.
Q. Why can’t I unlock locked surveys?
Answer: All completed surveys are automatically locked a couple of months after they are completed. The intention is that locked surveys should definitely not be re-opened, due mostly to the reasons already stated above. However, there are other reasons why locked surveys shouldn’t be re-opened.
Firstly, the underlying software that powers Genos Surveys might have changed in some small but significant way since that survey was originally open (e.g. we might have changed the way we’re encoding emails in the database or we might have added some new features to a report), so when the survey is re-opened, it might not work right because the data for that survey is incompatible with the current version of the software. Although this is a relatively rare complication, it has happened on a few occasions and when it does, the ramifications can be quite bad. And although it would technically be possible to upgrade old surveys so that they work with new releases of the software, this would be a wasted effort, since the overarching objective is to avoid re-opening old surveys.
Depending on how the survey has been paid for, re-opening an old survey might have an impact on billing. If the survey is more than a few months old, this can end up being difficult to catch and/or fix.
Finally, if a locked survey isn’t unlocked carefully, we can end up with raters receiving emails from a survey that in their mind was completed several months ago and so they start wondering why they are only now receiving emails. This can lead to a poor user experience and possibly complaints.
Q. Why can I download a report with a “Pending” status?
Answer: Genos reports, in particular Leadership 180 Reports, are often used as part of development programs or workshops and, in such cases, it is important that every participant attending the program has a report, as the contents of the report are often built into the program and, as such, the facilitator will most likely ask participants to refer to various pages in the report during the course of the workshop.
It is often the case that participants have not had enough time to get their report completed prior to the workshop. However, in such cases the participant still needs a report so that they can follow along in the program. Rather than provide them with a sample report that has “Sally Sample” on the front cover, it is preferable to provide them with a report that has their own name on the front cover. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, it means that the process of printing reports is much easier – all you need to do is download the report for each participant who will be attending, print it out and send it along, without worrying about how many sample reports you need to print for people who haven’t completed the survey process. It also means that handing out reports at the workshop is much more straightforward as there will be one report for each participant and each report will have the participant’s name on the front. This also avoids the awkwardness of handing out completed reports to some people and then having to hand out “Sally Sample” reports to whoever is left over.
Q. Will I be charged tokens if I download a report with a “Pending” status?
Answer: Yes, you will, in the sense that you will be unable to have the tokens for that participant refunded because a report will have already been downloaded for that participant. In essence, if a participant attends a workshop that has the Genos report built in, all participants in the program benefit from the Intellectual Property that is contained within the report, not just the participants who have completed reports. There is a great deal of information on the Genos model, the types of behaviours that underlie each dimension of the model and tips on how to obtain additional feedback. Although a participant with an incomplete report doesn’t obtain as much value from an incomplete report as a participant with a completed report, they still obtain some value. Finally, participants do not normally receive a discount on the course fees if they fail to get their report completed prior to the session. Instead, it is common practice to re-open the survey so that participants who had incomplete reports can finish the process.
Q. How do I know if I am downloading an incomplete report?
Answer: When reports are Pending, the “Download” link will be orange. This indicates that whilst the report can be downloaded, it will not contain any real data. The report will instead be generated with sample data.
Q. What should I do if a participant has reported their survey “got stuck” at the last page?
Our goal at Genos International is to ensure 100% reliability for participants and raters when they are completing tasks on Genos Surveys. Although our success rate is very high, about 1 in 5000 survey submissions over the last year have been failing. The problem has only been reported on Internet Explorer 11 and, as best as we can tell, the issue seems to be occurring on the final survey screen.
When the final screen of a survey is reached, the label on the ‘Continue’ button changes to ‘Submit Responses’. Clicking the ‘Submit Responses’ button is supposed to result in a confirmation box being presented, which asks the question, “Are you ready to submit your responses?”. Clicking “OK” causes the survey to be submitted, whereas clicking “Cancel” provides participants with the opportunity to review responses before they try submitting again later. That’s how the end of the process is supposed to work.
However, some users of Internet Explorer 11 have reported that the survey sometimes “gets stuck” on the final page and the ‘Submit Responses’ button “does nothing”. This is a very bad situation because although the responses have been saved in the browser at this stage, they have not yet been sent to Genos Surveys. This means that Genos cannot manually submit the responses for them and, furthermore, Genos ends up with very little technical information with which to diagnose the problem. Genos has tried on numerous occasions to reproduce the problem but has been unable to do so.
On July 31, 2018 Genos deployed a new version of Genos Surveys that attempts to address the two main problems noted above.
Firstly, Genos has added a very simple diagnostic. A tiny green arrow is now included in the progress bar during a survey. If this arrow is green by the time the participant gets to the final page the survey should, theoretically, submit OK. However, if the final page of the survey is still ‘getting stuck’, it will be very useful to know whether or not the arrow is still visible in the progress bar.
The updated progress bar looks like this:
Secondly, if the survey does get stuck on the last page, it will try to send a backup copy of the responses to Genos Surveys. The backup copy can then be used by Genos technical support staff to rebuild the responses and submit them on behalf of the participant.
Answer: If a participant (or rater) reports that their survey “got stuck” at the last page, the steps you should follow are:
- Ask the participant what browser they are using.
- Ask the participant if there is a green tick in the progress bar.
- If the participant seems reasonably computer-savvy and happy to help, ask them to send you a screen shot of the entire last page of the survey, including the address bar.
- Send the following information to firstname.lastname@example.org:
- The participant’s name and email address (it is important to include both, because sometimes there are near-duplicate records in the database and it is important that the Genos technical team analyses the correct one).
- The ID of the survey in which they had the issue.
- Their browser type.
- Whether or not the green tick was visible in the progress bar at the time the issue occurred.
- The screen shot (if the participant was able to provide one).
- The recommended advice to the participant would be:
- To wait 24 hours until the Genos technical support team have had a chance to investigate. If the backup copy of the responses arrived at Genos Surveys and the Genos technical support team is able to reconstruct the survey responses using the backup, no more action will be required on the participant’s part.
- If they prefer to complete the survey immediately, advise them to try a different browser on the same computer. Genos recommends Mozilla Firefox first and Google Chrome second.
- If that fails, the recommended advice is to try a different browser on a different device on a different network. Quite often we find that a survey that failed to submit on Internet Explorer 11 works fine on a mobile phone or tablet.
Genos will, of course, endeavour to find the source of the problem and adjust the survey software accordingly. In the meantime, we are hopeful that the enhancements we have made will at least reduce the amount of pain that is caused by this issue and, ideally, that participants and raters will not have to re-do any surveys.
Q. Can you advise at what point volume discounts apply and what the discount might be – Is it a flat rate or sliding scale?
Answer: Basically, for the self-managed service (administering your own surveys) a 20% discount automatically applies to the retail price of the reports.
Assessments are purchased by pre-purchasing tokens. Tokens can be used to run any assessment type in Genos Surveys and are deducted once participants are added. You can also qualify for higher discount tiers based on the amount you spend in a single purchase. So to receive a 30% discount, you will need to spend $5,000 or more. To receive a 40% discount you will need to spend $25,000 or more and 50% for $50,000 or more.
From the Member portal, Australian practitioners can pre-purchase tokens at any time if self-managing. This might be useful in showing you how it works. Additionally, you can see the pricing tiers in the 2018 pricing list.
Q. What is the link between EI and DiSC?
Answer: Our view on this is that self-assessment tools like DISC, MBTI and The Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) are extremely helpful in giving people insight into their unique type and help us understand the differences we may see in others.
The focus we place when using tools like these (in conjunction with EI based behavioural feedback) is in the ability to be flexible when working with people who exhibit different preferences to us. An analogy I often use is that of a rubber band – we can all stretch/flex and adapt our style to meet the needs of s specific context but over time will revert to our particular type or style.
EI based feedback gives insight into the behaviour we demonstrate as seen through the eyes of others. This will be influenced by our DISC preferences but should not inhibit us in exhibiting any of the behaviours we measure. What we may see however is people taking different approaches to achieve the same goal.
We typically use DISC in our ‘Developing Self and Other Awareness’ sections of our programs. Please refer to the DiSC resource in the member portal that was created by Dr. Ben Palmer to help people consider how they can use their DISC style most effectively.
For FAQs about the one-day enhancement program, please watch this overview video.
Q. Does the Genos EI test need to be administered by Genos personnel?
Answer: For researcher purposes, there is no need to convert the raw scores into percentile scores. This would only be necessary for people that were going to debrief clients about their EI scores relative to others. Thus, you feel confident with following the instructions to score the Genos EI questionnaire as described in the document that you downloaded from our research webpage.
Q. Can I get a letter from Genos regarding permission to use the survey for research purposes?
Answer: The best way to proceed is for you to write out what you need to include in the permission letter (from Genos). Each university can be slightly different in this respect. Once you send us the content of the letter, it will be reviewed. Genos can then place the content on a document with a Genos letter-head and include a signature at the bottom of the permission letter.