"In fact, there is almost no hard evidence for midlife crisis other than a few small pilot studies conducted decades ago," Barbara Hagerty writes in her new book, Life Reimagined.

Local work and pilot studies need to be carried out to engage policymakers at a country level and provide them with evidence, he added.

In pilot and field studies, test takers took both the existing TOEIC test and the new test. Statistical analysis of the results confirmed that the difficulty level of the two tests was equivalent.