TMA Test Practice: the Talentenanalyse and the Capaciteitenanalyse

Every capacity subtest gets its own number from 1 to 9. A TMA-generated report shows one bar per subtest with a Dutch label beside it, a paragraph on each, and no overall score. A partner who runs the test puts it plainly: you get no IQ. So a weak subtest is visible to the employer rather than averaged away, and a strong one cannot carry a weak one.

A 5 is "gemiddeld", average. On a Dutch school report a 5 is an onvoldoende. On a TMA report it is the middle of the scale. TMA defines its Talentenanalyse scale as a stanine, mean 5 and standard deviation 2, and the capacity scale reads the same way, although the capacity report itself does not name it.

You are compared with people at your education level. TMA norms the capacity subtests at middle and higher level, MBO and HBO/WO, so the same answers score higher against the MBO group than against the HBO/WO one. The level of the role usually decides which.

There is no published pass mark. Each employer decides how much weight to give the results, and PRiMAN says employers increasingly weight them heavily in selection.

The real screens are not public. TMA publishes no screenshot or candidate manual for the capacity subtests. We do not know whether you can go back, whether the clock is shown or whether there is a practice item. Our versions move forward only with a Skip button, show the clock, and have no practice round.

Option counts are ours except on arithmetic. TMA gives five options per sum on Rekenvaardigheid. For the others we follow the only samples that show a count: four for number series and word analogies, five for figures, three for technical insight.

No source mentions negative marking, and TMA's own report text reads a low score as lower capacity or carelessness, not as a guessing penalty. We score number right, so a blank is never better than a guess.

The Talentenanalyse block size is our reading. TMA says you choose the statement that fits you best from statements of equal social desirability, but not how many you see at once. We show pairs. Our version is also shortened, to 96 choices, and its results describe how your choices leaned rather than a stanine against TMA's Dutch norm group.

Technisch Inzicht items are drawings on the real test. Ours describe each mechanism in words. The reasoning is the same; add some diagram-based practice before the day.

Controleren is not built. A sixth subtest, checking 100 pairs of letter and number strings in 4 minutes, appears on TMA's 2021 pages and older reports but has gone from its current product pages, so we have not built it. If your invitation names it, that stage is real and we do not simulate it.

Both are Dutch publishers based in Utrecht, and Dutch practice-test sites list them side by side, but they are different companies with different instruments. The TMA Method is published by TMA B.V., the name on its handbook and on the COTAN register entry for the Talentenanalyse. If your invitation says Test-Toolkit, you are sitting an Ixly test instead.

TMA has also grown by acquisition, so the name on your invitation may be a TMA company rather than TMA itself: PRiMAN in the Netherlands, TMA Performance (formerly DecisionWise) in the United States, TMA France, and BrainsFirst.