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
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