Assessing Competence

Abstract

Three sets of factors seem to produce and explain competence: cognitive skills, especially high order ones; affective states, including motivation, attitudes and emotional reaction patterns; and conative factors, or “coping skills.” The first lecture describes various ways in which competence has been assessed in research studies. The second lecture will describe new measures of higher-order cognitive skills, as in the work of Sternberg; and dimensions of cognitive processing that are assessed with the Rorschach. The third lecture will describe measures of affective characteristics and coping skills that have demonstrated a useful degree of validity.