Skip navigation.
The Learner's Edge logolink to home page

"We hire people for their skills, but the whole person shows up for work."  Chester I. Barnard

Highlands Ability Battery

The Highlands Ability Batterytm (THAB) is a state-of-the art tool that objectively measures innate abilities. Abilities are what one can do quickly and easily. Abilities control the ways we instinctively learn, communicate, lead, make decisions, solve problems, work with objects and use our mental and creative talents.

One very important way in which THAB differs from other tests is that it does not measure learned material and it does not rely on 'self-report' questions. Instead, it directly measures an individual's natural abilities via exercises called work samples. Each work sample is a task designed to measure one, and only one, specific ability. By isolating abilities in this manner, THAB often reveals an individual's previously undiscovered talents. There is no pass or fail with this tool; no ideal profile - it gives results that tell how one naturally works best and what one's real strengths and talents are.

Knowing your natural abilities may be the most powerful piece of self-knowledge available to you. Abilities are not intelligence, personality, skills or interests. They are the talents that make some things easy for you and others more difficult. Finding out your natural talents can help you succeed at whatever you do.

THAB is offered in CD format. It takes approximately 3 hours to complete, if taken at one sitting. (It may also be broken into several segments.) At the conclusion of the test, a comprehensive 30+ page report is immediately available on-line. Although this report is comprehensive, it cannot answer questions or provide the depth of insight that can be provided by a trained professional. The professional can relate the meaning of THAB to the client's needs and describe how the information can be used most effectively to make career and life decisions. For this reason, an integral part of the THAB process is a two-hour private one-on-one feedback consultation. Because of the depth and specificity of the information contained in the report, only professionals trained and certified by The Highlands Company are permitted to offer THAB and the feedback consultation.

The Battery is very useful in finding the fit and best environment for employees in your company, as well as for individual differences.

Click here to sample the Highlands Ability Battery Now!

Outcomes from going through the Battery include:

  • Dealing more positively and effectively with individual differences
  • Maximizing individual performance
  • Working with less stress and more enjoyment
  • Achieving greater efficiency in problem solving and decision making
  • Communicating ideas more effectively
  • Understanding how you learn and process information most efficiently
  • Balancing work and home

History and Validation

In 1990, two lifelong friends, Don Hutcheson (advertising executive) and Bob McDonald, Ph. D. (psychologist) conceived and developed a simple principle: When people are in work in which they use their natural abilities, they enjoy the work more AND they are also more successful. This principle is the guiding force behind the programs of the Highlands Company.

The Highlands Company maintains facilities in more than 70 cities in the United States. Over the years, nearly 20,000 individual clients - students, adult career seekers and corporate employees and managers - have benefited from the Highlands Company programs. Among corporate clients are IBM, BellSouth, Cisco, GlaxoSmithKline and JP Morgan Chase Bank.

Research on natural abilities goes back over 70 years. The Highlands Company itself has conducted a number of far-reaching studies on abilities. Their research has consistently shown that when people are in work in which they use their natural abilities, they enjoy the work more and are more successful.

The Highlands Company will continue to conduct rigorous research to test the Reliability and Validity of The Highlands Ability Battery(tm) (THAB). The minimum reliability standard for the 18 tests that make up The Highlands Ability Battery(tm) is r = .80. Each test must pass this standard before it is included in the battery. The reliability standards of the 18 components range from .83 - .93 - a highly reliable and credible measure.

In general, research on The Highlands Ability Battery has shown replicable evidence of the following:

  • The pattern of abilities is more stable and more predictive than any one particular score on an ability measure.
  • Abilities remain constant over time. Ability patterns are relatively more stable than individual ability scores.
  • The pattern of abilities is predictive of:
    1. Occupational choice.
    2. Success within an occupational field.
    3. Satisfaction with an occupational field.
  • The Highlands Ability Battery matches not only in factorial structure, but also in specific correlational study such well-known and researched ability measures as the CAB, DAT, GATB, Kit of Factor-Referenced Tests, and the Employee Aptitude Survey. This means that The Highlands Ability Battery(tm) is measuring the same thing as these well-researched and validated ability measures.

To view more research on The Highlands Ability Battery, go to their website http://www.highlandsco.com/battery_research.php

Services and Fees

To experience the Highland assessment for yourself, contact The Learner's Edge (diane@thelearnersedge.com) for a coach certified to deliver The Highlands Ability Battery. The cost of an on-line assessment and a 2-hour feedback session is $450.