ABSTRACT
An assessment center (AC) has been defined as:
A standardized evaluation of behavior based on multiple inputs. Several trained observers and techniques are used. Judgments about behavior are made, in major part, from specifically developed assessment simulations. These judgments are pooled in a meeting among the assessors or by a statistical integration process. In an integration discussion, comprehensive accounts of behavior—and often ratings of it—are pooled. The discussion results in evaluations of the assessees’ performance on the dimensions or other variables that the assessment center is designed to measure. Statistical combination methods should be validated in accordance with professionally accepted standards.
(International Task Force on Assessment Center Guidelines, 2009, pp. 244–245) In practice the label “AC” is mostly used to denote the simulations that comprise part of a more elaborate procedure in which interviews and psychological tests are also often incorporated.