ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews psychometric evidence underlying the assessment center (AC) method with an eye toward understanding what ACs measure and eventually determining their usefulness for various purposes and talent management objectives. As should be clear to the reader at this juncture, there is a good deal of variation in the focus of design, scoring, and interpretation across AC administrations. Corresponding to differences in execution are differences in purpose, with assessment centers being used to meet various talent management functions. With such variation in form and function, it should be no surprise that a diversity of methodological approaches have been used in evaluating their effi cacy. The result is a rich literature attesting to the effectiveness of multiple variations on the AC method using multiple different analytic techniques.
