How to report and record a negative test case

Question

I have a QTP test case and wanted to expand it to test multiple user role types.

It should pass for high privilege users and fail for low privilege users at various points depending on what page they have access to.

I was wondering how these should be reported, as passes or fails for the negative testing. As an involved tester, I would understand the red means they are working as designed, but could give someone a false sense of what the test accomplishes. A non-technical person like my manager or project manager might not understand that red portion and think there is a problem and want them to report green. Is there a best practice for reporting a lot of negative functional tests?

Answer 1

They should be marked as succeeding, not failing.

The test itself is to validate that low privilege users can't access things that they aren't permitted to, so a successful test is one in which they are unable to access the resource, and a failing test is one where they can access the resource. The test case should be written as such, and not rely on the tester to remember that these tests are supposed to fail.