Following the TM-WISO, 205 participants provided information on their preparation time. On average, participants prepared for TM-WISO for 12.08 hours; the correlation between preparation time and test score was not significant.
The complex problem-solving tasks used in TM-WISO are intended to be less trainable than tasks measuring general cognitive abilities used in some university admission tests. This is to prevent those participants who have many resources (time and money) available for preparation from gaining an advantage in the test. Most participants had prepared between 0 and 25 hours, but some reported up to 100 hours of preparation time. The correlation between preparation time and test score was slightly negative at -.068 and not significant. Further studies should explore what role the type of preparation plays. The results were presented at the Differential Psychology and Psychological Diagnostics Conference of the German Psychological Society.