Performance-Based Assessment

Performance-based assessment describes an approach to testing using tasks, which differs considerably from traditional assessment formats. [Page 1235]Although wide variation exists among the range of tasks that fall under this approach, performance-based testing tasks are characterized by at least one (or more typically, two or more) of the following three elements. First, performance-based assessment often involves high levels of interactivity or engagement with the testing task/item. Second, the result of performance-based assessment is usually the generation of a unique product or performance. The third and perhaps most defining element of performance-based assessment is the extent to which the testing task is contextualized in highly realistic scenarios. For tests composing one or more performance-based tasks, the measurement expectation is that the test takers will demonstrate their proficiency through tasks that are complex in nature and structured to mimic or replicate the real-life situations in which the skills of interest would be used or needed. Some examples for understanding the idea of performance-based assessment at a basic level include the driver’s license road test, the writing and defense of a doctoral dissertation, the carrying out of a science experiment, the creation of an art project, and a musical performance.

Performance-based assessment is predicated on not only knowing but also doing. Regarding this point, there is another attribute that can set performance-based assessment apart: In addition to the outcome (the product or the performance) that is evaluated, in some performance-based testing contexts, test takers may be evaluated on explaining or otherwise showing the process by which they created the outcome. For some performance-based testing situations, the how of the performance may be valued as much as or perhaps even more than the what.

A note about terminology: There are a number of terms that have been used over the years to reference the general idea of performance-based assessment as described earlier. Performance-based assessment itself poses a semantic challenge, in that all testing tasks require a performance of some kind in the broadest sense, but the term performance-based assessment in the measurement literature has come to mean a specific and narrow view of performance that is marked by tasks that are generally highly open ended and contextualized. Other terms, such as direct assessment and authentic assessment, have been coined to reinforce the notion of situating testing tasks in real-life situations and the value thereof, but implicit in such terminology is a contrast that has been viewed as unnecessarily divisive in some contexts. Thus, while the terms direct assessment and authentic assessment are used at times, performance-based assessment provides a more neutral way of referencing these kinds of testing tasks.