Ath05117 Some Issues with Adult Self-evaluations in Education and Training

This paper promotes a social-cognitive framework to categorise those factors that enhance self-evaluation. These factors include social messages, personal factors and situational factors in the self-evaluation context. In addition, some technical issues with the accuracy of self-evaluations are outlined. These related to (a) the adequacy of the criterion, (b) the method of statistical comparison, (c) the quantitative or qualitative basis for selfevaluations and (d) the procedures used in obtaining self-evaluations. It is argued that self-evaluations are inherently economical, reliable and valuable especially when they are geared to idiographic, criterion-referenced and formative assessments of performance rather than ability.