After all, the miscellaneous, random, and purely empirical method of Lough, Lahy and Woolley seems to be the most promising experimental procedure for the immediate present, and perhaps for some time to come. This method is, to be sure, but a rough, provisional and unanalyzed expedient. It calls for long and patient coöperative labor. It does not at once afford us the systematic scientific insight which we may wish we possessed. But it will at least save us from the delusion that we already possess such insight, and it should serve to check the fervent and semi-religious zeal that leads us to mistake prophecy for service. Analysis and classification of the results which this method yields are possible when the results are accumulated in adequate measure.
It is essential that interest in this eminently practical use of the psychological laboratory be sustained among those who are responsible for the further promotion of its methods and problems. But it is undesirable that public expectation should be strenuously directed toward the laboratory until it has done more than the outlining of a series of problems and the initiation of preliminary efforts toward their solution. These specialized vocational methods, the miniature, the sampling, the analogy, and the empirical procedure, constitute four definite and promising instruments of research. They have yielded results of such demonstrable practical value, in the selection of special types of workers and in the detection of particular aptitudes and abilities, that the application of selected mental tests has already come to play an important rôle in the placement and training departments of a considerable number of industrial and commercial concerns. While the more slowly developing individual and vocational psychographs are being perfected, these specialized vocational tests will not only serve the purposes of temporary assistance and expedience, but the results derived from their intelligent use and their further patient elaboration will contribute materially toward the establishment of more complete and systematic technique.[7]
[7] In the Appendix is given a list of references to books and articles which describe numerous tests worth trying out by the empirical method. Instructions should be carefully followed so that results may be comparable with those secured by other workers.