Soft Skills Assessments

Colleagues,

I have recently learned about an open source soft skills assessment that has been tested for youth in at least two cultural contexts. Although designed for youth seeking work, I wondered if this assessment might be useful for adults seeking work, or in the workforce. I am not involved with the development or use of this assessment, and am not necessarily recommending it; however, I find it intriguing and, given that it is open source, wonder if it might be worthwhile to test it out with adults in the U.S. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts about that.

New Tool for Measuring Soft Skills Across Cultures

Measuring so-called 'soft skills' is challenging. How can one develop a reliable assessment of these skills that can be used in a variety of countries and contexts? EDC, ProExam, and the Akilah Institute for Women published findings from the USAID Workforce Connections project highlighting the development of an Anchored Big Five Inventory (BFI) tool - a psychometrically sound, soft skills assessment appropriate for multiple country contexts and tested in Philippines and Rwanda.

Breakthrough Findings!

The Anchored BFI was used to measure youth's soft skills in these diverse contexts with reliability, discrimination, and predictive ability. Findings indicate that this tool may correct for cultural bias. Thus, youth-serving organizations can:

  • Spend less time developing and testing context-specific, psychometrically sound, soft skills assessments since the Anchored BFI is open-source and fills this need.
  • Compare results from context to context, allowing for increased learning about soft skills interventions, outcomes, and populations across projects.

Download the 4 page briefer or full report.

About the Project
Workforce Connections, managed by partner FHI 360, promoted evidence-based learning and peer-to-peer knowledge exchange, with the goal of improving the capacity of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and its industry partners to deliver quality workforce development programming.

 

David Rosen
djrosen123@gmail.com

 

Comments

Thanks for inviting the conversation, David. I read the brief report on the BFI (Big Five Inventory). What was interesting about this 44-question self-assessment is, as David notes above, it was tested in the Philippines and Rwanda and has been translated into 28 different language. According to the brief, the Big Five soft skills, which are also referred to with the acronym CANOE, include the following:   1)"Conscientiousness: One’s propensity to organize and achieve. A conscientious person is likely to be on time, thorough, and hard working."   2) "Agreeableness: One’s positivity in interactions with others. People who are more agreeable are viewed as friendly or helpful, as opposed to “cold” or less friendly."   3) "Neuroticism/Emotional Stability. One’s ability to manage stressful situations or emotions. An emotionally stable person is often less worried or depressed and can be less cautious than a less emotionally stable person." [Emotional stability seems like an appropriate characteristic to assess; however, neuroticism is an odd word choice. Was that word chosen to make the acronym CANOE work out??]   4) "Openness: One’s capacity to enjoy “new” ways of thinking about the world. An open person may be highly open to new cultures or artistic experiences or to learning something new. This dimension is closely related to one’s cognitive abilities."   5) "Extraversion: One’s propensity towards social interaction. More extraverted people are socially dominant and may tend toward sensation seeking, while less extraverted people are more reserved and less dominant in social situations."   What do members think about the potential relevance of such an assessment tool?   Cheers, Susan Finn Miller Assessment CoP