Affirmative Assessment System™
The Affirmative Assessment System™ has two key purposes:
- Recognition and affirmation of achievement by individuals or groups;
- Confirmation of expert judgements.
The Affirmative Assessment System™ employs forms of construct referencing, critical
observation and connoisseurship rather than a narrower focus on criteria, competencies,
task specifications or psychometric measures. The system is particularly valuable
where judgements are required about:
- personal qualities and attributes (e.g. leadership, creativity, motivation, empathy);
- applications which involve the synthesis and integration of complex activities,
skills and decisions;
- the ability to perform in practice rather than demonstrate skill or the recall of
knowledge.
The Affirmative Assessment System™ may be paper based but is most effective when
used with Afferme™ software.
The Affirmative Assessment System™ is a system for the assessment of performance,
which enables judgements to be made about the value and appropriateness of outcomes
produced by individuals or groups and for those judgements to be recorded in the
form of rating scales that convert qualitative judgements into standardised quantitative
measures for subsequent statistical analysis and auditing. The Affirmative Assessment
System™ employs a framework of operating procedures and practices which when applied
through the use of categories and criteria, descriptive of the domains, constructs
and outcomes that describe the performance expected, enable assessment judgements
to be made. The Affirmative Assessment System™ in itself is independent of any information
provided as a means of description but when combined with such information, results
in marking schemes, procedures and materials which may then be used for examination,
assessment, appraisal, evaluation, auditing and verification purposes.
The Affirmative Assessment System™ incorporates:
- procedures used to identify, categorise and describe the nature, range, type and
level of expected outcomes and forms of evidence that define the assessment constructs
to be applied and describe the nature of performance to be assessed;
- rating scales which incorporate the concept of consistency of performance, application
or similar constructs and which employ Limen Referencing for the award of marks
according to selected patterns of distribution;
- mark records or profiles which may be generated by hand or by the use of software
and which relate different aspects of an assessment so as to enable the subsequent
analysis of scores, together with procedures for standardisation, tests of dependability,
assessor reliability, comparability of assessment judgements and the evaluation
of training, teaching, learning and performance strategies;
- procedures which enable the incorporation in varying degrees and in different ways,
of those assessment categories, constructs, criteria and descriptions developed
to meet specified needs, together with other tests, examination or assessment methods
as may be required;
- training and information in any appropriate form or media which enables the concepts,
principles and practice of the Affirmative Assessment System™ to be established,
used or maintained in current or subsequent forms or versions.
Specific functions of The Affirmative Assessment System™ are:
- the analysis of performance so as to identify appropriate forms of evidence and
descriptions of the outcomes expected;
- the organisation of such descriptions into formats which enable assessment judgements
to be made upon the consistency of evidence presented;
- rating of such judgements so as to control variables and apply different weightings;
- the production of quantifiable information for auditing, management, quality assurance,
monitoring, standardisation and comparability purposes.
The Affirmative Assessment System™ is used in a number of QCA accredited awards.
Contact the team at Talent Consulting
to find out more.