ABSTRACT
Most educators agree that well thought out and clearly communicated definitions are the keys to understanding. In few areas of education does this principle seem to hold as well as in the areas of affective characteristics and affective assessment. Good definitions are needed in order to (a) select or design an appropriate assessment instrument, (b) examine the technical quality of the instrument, and (c) interpret (i.e., make sense of) the results. Consequently, this chapter is in many respects the keystone chapter of the entire volume. Without an understanding of what is being assessed, assessment is trivial at best.
