Originally Posted By: Nick Gromicko
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to offer psychometrically valid exams (EBPHI & NACHI) and I stand ready to demonstrate that the NHIE is not valid for many reasons. Of the two, EBPHI offers only old-style, 2 version, proctored options. NACHI offers both proctored and unproctored, although we require passing an unproctored version as one of the requirements of
http://www.nachi.org/membership.htm
The term
NACHI's exam makes little sense. NACHI has no exam. It has an endless number of them. From the begining we built our system to be everything and anything anyone could ever want or need. Its built- in intelligence recognizes taker weakness, tracks pass-fail rate for each question and publishes that data while you take the exam, produces billions of versions all somewhat different, can be adjusted for everything including geographic bias (less questions about oil fired boilers in FL for example), can be proctored by third parties from any computer that is online (not just at testing centers). It can even be proctored at Chapter meetings if a chapter wanted to. Furthermore, because tens of thousands have taken versions of it, NACHI now possess more data on home inspection test questions, question by question, than all other sources combined and then some. Read
http://www.nachi.org/aboutexam.htm The NHIE can never be psychometrically valid due to its core fatal psychometric flaw (Noel Zak of EBPHI admitted in court under oath that their entire pool of questions were submitted by inspectors who have something pertinent in common). I was in the courtroom myself when she confessed. And other flaws (after their question pool was found for sale on ebay, it tried on at least one occassion to increase difficulty by adding questions outside the scope of a home inspection). Anyone, like me, who has taken the NHIE knows what I'm talking about. Anyway, the first flaw was dumb but the second one is dumber than dumb and warned against by every expert in the testing field. It was equivalent to a school teacher, after discovering that someone passed out a vocabulary cheat sheet, deciding to grade the students in vocabulary on the basis of algebra problems. Anyway, it is about as bad as bad gets. I realize it was, for a while, the only choice some states had, but donkeys have been replaced by the automobiles too.
Creating a valid exam, though difficult
technically, isn't rocket surgery. It is quite a straight forward series of steps. I recommend the following book:
Standards for Educational adn Psychological Testing put out by the American Educational Research Association, The American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education. And so the state of FL could easily create their own (like TX did) using data NACHI would be happy to supply.
The real problem (with regard to consumers) is threefold:
1. Exams, even good ones, are horrible predictors of competency in this industry. Like construction... this is a very hands-on business. Good exam takers are often horrible inspectors. Thinking exams weed out competent from incompetent hurts consumers.
2. Proctoring strengthens one link in a chain, which is silly. No one proctors one's attention span in a continuing education class. No one even prohibits a licensed inspector from hiring a blind assistant to do 90% of the inspection for him while he drinks coffee. This thinking that mere proctoring somehow protects consumers is giving proctoring credit it doesn't deserve and hurts consumers.
3. Good home inspectors go out of business much more often from failure to market their good services properly, than due to not having $15 to buy the NHIE answers. The consumer suffers regardless of why the good inspector is no longer available, but poor marketing on the part of a good home inspector...hurts consumers.
In summary, consumers are hurt by attributing much undue credit to exams and/or proctoring when in fact they mean almost nothing. And consumers are also hurt when good inspectors fail to market themselves strong enough to earn a nice living, be able to afford nice equipment, be able to afford continuing education (and the time off to take it) and be able keep themselves and ther good works, available to consumers.
Want to help consumers? Market stronger so you can charge them more so you can stay in business longer so they can benefit from your services.
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Nick Gromicko
Founder
dues=79cents/day.
I much prefer email to private messages.
