The Ball Aptitude Battery®, also known as the BAB™, is the centerpiece of The Ball Foundation’s work. Founded in 1975 to develop the Ball Aptitude Battery, the Foundation later established Career Vision℠ to merge science and practice. As a core component of the Foundation’s research program, the ongoing development and maintenance of the Ball Aptitude Battery is a priority.
The purpose of the Ball Aptitude Battery is to understand how one’s talent and abilities can align or “fit” with different performance environments. These could encompass occupational choices in the workplace, types of environment or coursework choices in school, or choice of hobbies and leisure time. Much work has been done on how different career paths use different aptitudes.
An aptitude battery is similar to an achievement test in that they are both predictive. While achievement measures are used to assess acquired skill and knowledge to predict subsequent academic performance, aptitude measures are broader and are used to predict fit with different tasks. An achievement test gauges potential skill acquisition in a school environment, while an aptitude battery recognizes that we are all different and it may tap into strengths that are not measured by traditional achievement measures.
The beauty of aptitudes is the discovery of possibilities.