How PAR Inc. Increased Assessment Completion Rates by Moving from Live Proctoring to Record & Review

Introduction

PAR Inc., a global publisher of psychological assessment instruments, supports education, healthcare, and psychology professionals with tools recognized for their precision, compliance, and trustworthiness. Their products play a vital role in ensuring reliable evaluation outcomes for practitioners and researchers across diverse fields.

As digital assessment adoption came necessary for PAR Inc. and  faced growing complexity in maintaining integrity with new-age AI cheating era, while ensuring a seamless candidate experience. Live proctoring was secure but created scheduling issues and added extra work for the team. As participation grew worldwide, PAR Inc. needed a more flexible and scalable way to ensure exam integrity without affecting the candidate experience.

After careful consideration, PAR Inc. partnered with Talview to transition from traditional live proctoring to a modern, Record & Review Proctoring model transforming how assessments were administered and monitored.

Challenges

PAR Inc. faced several interlinked operational and user experience challenges stemming from its live proctoring model:

• Scheduling Constraints: Coordinating live proctors across multiple time zones created friction for both candidates and staff, leading to inconsistent participation.

• Operational Overhead: Continuous real-time monitoring required significant human resources, increasing costs and administrative burden.

• Candidate Drop-offs: Many candidates booked sessions but failed to attend due to rigid scheduling, contributing to low completion rates.

• Limited Scalability: As assessment volume increased, expanding live proctoring capacity demanded proportional growth in staffing and infrastructure.

• Inconsistent Experience: Time pressure and scheduling anxiety negatively impacted candidate confidence and overall test-taking experience.

These challenges collectively limited assessment completion rates to an average of 53%, impeding research timelines and operational efficiency.

Talview Solutions and Benefits

To address these challenges, PAR Inc. adopted Talview’s Record & Review Proctoring Solution, powered by AI-assisted monitoring and human validation for flagged events. The transition delivered measurable operational and experiential benefits:

• Flexible, On-Demand Testing: Candidates could complete assessments at their convenience, eliminating scheduling conflicts and enabling global participation.

• Reduced Manual Review Effort: AI intelligently flagged only suspicious activities, allowing human reviewers to focus on exceptions, cutting monitoring workload substantially.
  

• Enhanced Candidate Experience: Seamless registration and self-paced assessments improved accessibility, reducing test anxiety and boosting participation.

• Operational Efficiency: Staff resources were reallocated from routine supervision to higher-value analytical and research tasks.

• Scalable Assessment Delivery: The model supported expanding test volumes without additional staffing requirements, ensuring sustainable scalability.

Results and Future Prospects

The transition from live to Record & Review proctoring produced quantifiable and qualitative improvements across key performance indicators:

• Assessment completion rates increased from 53% to 77%, reflecting higher engagement and accessibility.

• Drop-off rates declined sharply, attributed to the elimination of time-zone scheduling conflicts.
  
  
• Candidate feedback through internal surveys indicated a marked improvement in perceived convenience and comfort.
  
  
• The Record & Review model is now being scaled across multiple research programs and assessment types, supporting PAR’s long-term research initiatives.

Building on this success, PAR Inc. continues to explore further AI-driven enhancements with Talview to advance inclusive, data-rich psychological assessment research globally.

“In our research project, we pivoted from live proctoring to Record & Review.  This allowed our research participants to take the assessment on their terms, and reduced anxiety about the confidentiality of their responses.  Switching to Record & Review removed several barriers for individuals and overall increased our completion rate, as well as the participant experience.”

- Kathryn Stubleski, Data Collection Coordinator, PAR, Inc

Conclusion

The collaboration between PAR Inc. and Talview demonstrates the transformative impact of modernizing proctoring with intelligent automation. By adopting the Record & Review model, PAR Inc. achieved measurable gains in completion rates, operational efficiency, and participant satisfaction. Beyond process optimization, this partnership reinforces a shared commitment to innovation, integrity, and inclusivity—ensuring psychological assessments remain accurate, accessible, and representative of today’s diverse populations.