This Terms of Use (“Terms”) is between the respondent (“you”) or user and Mumbai-Online Psychometrics Centre (“M-OPC”). It governs your access to and use of this website for the purpose of taking psychometric tests. By accessing our website, you agree to have read, understood and be bound by these Terms and the Privacy Policy. It provides information about the platform. This is a research project by Dr. Vivek Mohan Belhekar, Associate Professor, Department of Applied Psychology, University of Mumbai.
The M-OPC is an outcome of ‘Online Psychometrics: Data Science and Public Policy Project’ led by Dr. Vivek Belhekar (henceforth referred to as “lead researcher”), who is currently at the University of Mumbai. This project is purely aimed at scientific research in the discipline of Psychology and related interdisciplinary social sciences. The data obtained is used for research and public policy purposes.
In order to advance psychology and mental health into the public sphere, the website provides feedback for the psychometrics taken by a respondent. However, this feedback is based purely on the responses provided by the respondent (i.e. you) and is computer-generated. No personal verification of the feedback is done by the lead researcher. The primary purpose of the website is NOT to provide psychometric feedback but the primary and sole purpose of it is sound, scientific research. The website charges no fee from you.
2. Explanation of Terminology:
Test: refers to psychological measure that is primarily designed to measure abilities. It can be used interchanged with scale/ psychological scale/ psychological test/ psychological measures/ psychological instruments/ and similar words that may be invented in future/ present in the literature.
Scale: refers to psychological measure that is primarily designed to measure non-cognitive traits. It can be used interchanged with scale/ psychological scale/ psychological test/ psychological measures/ psychological instruments/ and similar words that may be invented in future/ present in the literature.
Psychological Attributes: Various psychological aspects are studies under this project. They include and do not limit to personality, intelligence, social attitudes, abilities, interests, preferences and choices. Each of them is being researched and is defined in the psychological literature. Some of the attributes shall be newly investigated in this project and may not have literature supporting them. In that case, they are considered as outcome of the project. The instruments developed by lead researcher and other researchers are available on the website are their copyright and IP cannot be used by individual and institution without permission. They include, and do not limit to MUPI, MUII, MUGAT, MUATB, MU-CPRS, MU-CDS, etc.
Version: Psychological tests/scales/ battery/ inventories are (a) revised over time and (b) are also available in different lengths at any time. Both are called versions. All versions are IP of researchers and governed under this agreement. E.g., MUII-S and MUII as two versions of MU Interest Inventory with different lengths.
Psychometric properties: Psychometric properties of the test include reliability, validity, norms and standardization. Each are well established in psychological literature.
Report: Feedback generated form the test scores of the user. This is computer generated feedback. This is not exclusively written for user. Broad categories of scores on psychological tests were identified and feedback text is written for them. This text appears on your report depending on your broad category.
M-OPC: Mumbai Online Psychometrics center. The M-OPC is an outcome of Online Psychometrics: Data Science and Public Policy Project led by Dr. Vivek Belhekar (henceforth referred to as “lead researcher”), at Department of of Applied Psychology, University of Mumbai.
Academic Partner: If the institute is joining with the M-OPC for assessment of their students/employees, members, etc. then that institute shall be called as academic partner. GICDE is our first academic partner.
When the technical terminology is not explained, then we reserve the right to specify the meaning in the context of M-OPC.
3. Privacy Practices
Any personal information, personal history, responses on tests or disclosure made by the respondent is kept confidential and private by the lead researcher. No individual data is used for any reason other than generating feedback for the respondent her/ himself. For all scientific purposes, only group-level data is analyzed, studied, presented, reported or published.
Feedback reports that are generated by the website are also not shared with anyone other than the respondent, unless respondents decides to do so.
If you’re a user from an academic partner, then your feedback report of Career Assessment will be shared with (i) the academic partner and (ii) your respective career mentor. The use and handling of your personal information from these 3rd parties will NOT be the responsibility of M-OPC.
M-OPC’s use of information and data is governed by M-OPC Privacy Policy.
If you have knowingly or unknowingly share the information with 3rd party, then the use and handling of your personal information from 3rd parties will NOT be the responsibility of M-OPC.
4. Ethics in psychology
On the website, you can take various psychological tests and scales, including but not limited to, personality, career interests, aptitude, intelligence, environmental attitudes, social attitudes and beliefs etc. While completing a test/ scale/ battery, you may be required to respond the “test items” in one of the following manners: (i) Select one or multiple correct option(s) for an item OR, (ii) Indicate your degree of agreement or disagreement on a “test item” of personal opinion or preference OR, (iii) Indicate frequency of a behaviour OR, (iv) Any other response that is permissible under a test/ scale/ battery/ psychological research studies
The website also requests you to fill some additional research questions and some (optional) demographic questions (e.g., age, sex, geographical region, education, etc.).
The results computed from your responses will be provided to you after you have finished he test/scale, etc. (In case of a technical malfunction, results might not appear, but this is expected to be rare.)
Your responses will be combined with those of many other respondents and used for research on how psychological characteristics are related to each other, to other psychosocial characteristics, and to various demographic variables. This research will be published in scientific journals and other sources of dissemination of information.
Your participation is completely voluntary, and confidential. 1. Voluntary: Until all of your responses have been submitted, you can withdraw from the study at any time and for any reason. If you choose to withdraw, your responses before the point of withdrawal will not be used. 2. Confidential: The collected data will be stored in a password-protected hard-drive and only academic researchers and their technical staff will have access to it.
Please be aware that the results computed from your responses may not match your perceptions and that this may be disappointing. (Note that the researchers cannot discuss your results with you.)
No other risk, harm, or discomfort is anticipated in completing the test/scales/battery.
We adhere to the 5 general ethical principals listed by APA for psychologists: Beneficence and nonmaleficence, Fidelity and responsibility, Integrity, Justice and Respect for people’s rights and dignity.
This research adheres to ethical guidelines for the survey psychological research.
If you have concerns about your rights as a research participant, you may write to the office of primary researcher Vivek Belhekar, Ph.D. at Department of Applied Psychology, University of Mumbai.
5. Limitation of Liability or Disclaimers
Neither M-OPC, it’s lead researcher, or any associated researcher of M-OPC will be liable for any indirect, incidental, punitive, special, consequential or exemplary damages or loss of the respondent or of anyone associated with the respondent. M-OPC is also not responsible for any harm that a respondent may do to themselves, or any other person.
M-OPC shall make all reasonable efforts in their capacity, to ensure security and confidentiality of their respondents and use such personal information in accordance with their privacy policy.
M-OPC is also not responsible for any malware that may be contracted by the website.
M-OPC is also not responsible for any malfunction caused before/during/after the use of website.
6. This website does not provide medical or psychological advice or help.
Any information in the form of text, graphics, respondent feedback provided to you, results is for informational purposes only. The content provided is not meant as a substitute for professional medical or psychological help, advice, diagnosis or treatment. We suggest you to seek professional help with a qualified mental health practitioner or a medical practitioner if you wish to know more about any psychological, medical, clinical or diagnostic condition(s). Do not disregard or ignore any advice or delay seeking professional help because of something you may have read on the M-OPC website. With regard to questions that you may have about the feedback reports generated, the lead researcher or anyone from the psychometrics and data science team will not be liable to respond to you.
You also agree and understand that all feedback generated is purely dependent by the responses provided by you, as a respondent and M-OPC is not responsible for any false, misleading or distorting responses that you may give. The feedback report generated also has no legal standing of its own and cannot be reproduced in any court of law as evidence of mental sanity/ insanity, or any other kind. The output/feedback is based on expert opinions for pre-conceived categories of responders and its accuracy may vary for each individual. The feedback is not advice and it is merely a scientific interpretation of your responses on test items.
The website is free to use and it does not provide any services.
7. Intellectual Property Rights
The website and its entire contents, features and functionality (including but not limited to all information, tests/ scale/ batteries/ experiments, software, text, displays, images, video and audio, and the design, selection and arrangement thereof), are completely and solely owned by the lead researcher, its licensors or other providers of such material and are protected by Government of India and international copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret and other intellectual property or proprietary rights laws.
These Terms of Use permit you to use the website for your personal, non-commercial use only. You must not reproduce, distribute, modify, create derivative works of, publicly display, republish, download, store or transmit any of the material on our Website, except that your computer/other e-devices may temporarily store copies of such materials in RAM incidental to your accessing and viewing those materials you may store files that are automatically cached by your web browser for display enhancement purposes.
You can us the report generated form this website. The report is indicative and not absolute.
If you are an independent psychologist or researcher, you may contact Vivek Belhekar to obtain permission of using the psychometric tools of this project as guided and delineated by him and his team.
You must not: 1. Use, modify, reproduce or redistribute any material from this website. 2. Reverse-engineer or try to steal the software code of this website.
Any use of this website which is not expressly permitted by these Terms of Use is a breach of the Terms of Use and a violation of copyright, trademark, intellectual property rights and any other law that may be applicable.
The web-site is developed by initial funding personal funding of Vivek Belhekar, then recognized by MU-Disaster Management Council and supported by GICED, and. The GICED received funds from DELL and AIF that GICED shared with us for getting reports of as many students as GICED are interested in. The GICED users can login from GICDE page directly to the website and carry out the assessment. GICED permitted to take as many tests as needed till the present form of the website is active. The test developed/ website process under this project remains rights of Vivek Belhekar and GICED is only a user of the test and website and shall receive psychometric reports for the same. The information provided by the GICED students on GICED website is not a part of M-OPC. The tests are not developed with the funding of either GICED, DELL or AIF or any other external funding. They were developed earlier by Vivek Belhekar with his collaborators over time. Only website development is partially supported by GICED (as a part of DELL and AIF project).
8. Payment/ Usage fee Details
No payment is required on the part of the user for accessing functionality that are made available for the users. This website is a research website and is not a service. We provide results since it may benefit people if they wish to use the results.
If institutional users charge any fee from their members, then M-OPC/ lead researcher is not responsible for this. Payment/ fee paid to institutional users is not fee paid to M-OPC. M-OPC access is free.
9. Who can use this website?
On this website, you can be a: 1. Individual user 2. Institutional user
For an individual user, 1. You can have an independent account if you are above the age of 18 years. 2. If you are below 16 years of age, a parent/ guardian is required to make an account from the parent/ guardian credentials in order to take psychometric tests. 3. If you are above 16 years but below 18 years of age, then you must agree that you have acquired consent from your parent/ guardian to sign up on this website and take psychometric tests. 4. You should be legally permitted to use such a website in your home country.
For an institutional user, 1. An institution is defined as an academic school/ college/ university or a corporate/ governmental company or organization, or any other group that legitimately identifies themselves as organization. 2. An institution can create their account and their students/ employees can sign up as part of that institution. 3. Institution will be able to see a cumulative report of all individuals under that institution. 4. The institution will not have access to any individual data or reports of their students or employees. 5. Only academic partners and other institutions who have obtained consent from the group of participants will be allowed to access individual reports. No identifiable individual responses on the test items will be shared with anyone other than the researchers.
10. Termination clause
1 You are free to terminate using the website at any time you feel so. At our end, we reserve the right to end use of the website by you in case of breach of these Terms of Use or any other behaviour deemed inappropriate by the lead researcher or his team.
11. Prohibited Uses
1. You may use the Website only for lawful purposes and in accordance with these Terms of Use. You agree not to use the Website to take any action that could harm us or a third party or in any way that violates any applicable state, local, IPC or international law. You may not attempt to circumvent any restriction or condition imposed on your use or access of the Website, or do anything that could disable, overburden, damage, or impair the site or interfere with any other party’s use of the Website.
2 A robotic application/s is/are not to use this website. Use of this website by robotic applications or any non-human machine is a violation of the use of the website.
12. Changes to Terms
1. We modify our Terms of Use from time to time to reflect the changing times, including but not limited to change in academics, change in research practices. Wherever possible, we will try to notify you but we are not obliged to do so. Hence, we would recommend that you keep checking our website to stay updated on our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
13. Jurisdiction
1. These Website Terms of Use shall be governed by and construed in accordance with Indian law. Disputes arising in connection with these Website Terms of Use shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Mumbai, Maharashtra (India). All dealings, correspondence and contacts between us shall be made or conducted in the English language.
14. Contact
For any further communication in regard to this website, you may contact on mopc@psychology.mu.ac.in. Communications in regard to seeking any psychological or medical help, seeking clarification of reports or any other query not deemed necessary for any scientific purpose will not be entertained by the lead researcher.