ABSTRACT
Assessments of communication skills occur in a wide variety of life-contexts, and in numerous ways, including grades on public speaking assignments in college courses, end-of-semester teaching evaluations, interviewer assessments of applicants’ job-relevant communication abilities, and ratings of call-center representatives’ customer-service performance, to list just a few. The overarching point of this chapter is that some skill assessments, and assessment techniques, are better than others. Addressing the quality of skill assessments foregrounds the concepts of measurement reliability and validity. Standard techniques for establishing reliability and validity are reviewed, and their application in a specific example of skill-relevant instrumentation (the BLIRT) is featured. Additional issues in skill assessment as they are exemplified in a second instrument (the CSRS) are examined. Common threats to assessment validity in the form of biases associated with self-assessments and stereotyping are discussed.
