What is an Assessment?

An assessment is a structured process for evaluating, measuring, and documenting knowledge, skills, abilities, traits, behaviors, or outcomes so decision-makers can act with confidence. Assessments can be informal (quick checks or quizzes) or highly formal (standardized, validated instruments) and are used across education, employment, certification, compliance, healthcare screening, customer research, and training.

Assessment.com is the place to take, create, and discover assessments of every kind from quick skills checkups to in-depth motivational profiles like the renowned MAPP Career Assessment. Individuals, coaches, schools, and businesses use our platform to make data-driven decisions about learning, hiring, promotion, development, and performance.

Where Assessments Are Used (Beyond the Classroom)

Education & Learning: Placement tests, diagnostic and formative checks, end-of-course exams, portfolios, capstones, and program outcomes.
Hiring & Talent Management: Pre-hire skills tests, cognitive ability, work-sample simulations, situational judgment, personality/motivation fit, leadership potential, and 360° feedback.
Employee Development & Training: Skills gap analysis, micro-credential exams, role-based certification, compliance recertification, and on-the-job performance assessments.
Licensure & Certification: High-stakes exams for regulated professions (e.g., healthcare, finance, trades) and continuing-education validations.
Compliance & Risk: Safety checklists, SOP proficiency, ISO/OSHA/industry standards, security awareness, and audit-ready evidence.
Healthcare & Well-Being (screening only): Standardized screeners and patient-reported outcomes instruments (non-diagnostic; used to inform referrals).
Customer & Market Research: Product knowledge checks for channel partners, usability tasks, and confidence-weighted surveys to inform go-to-market.
Academia & Research: Validated instruments for studies, norming, item banks, and longitudinal measurement.

Common Assessment Types

Knowledge & Skills Tests: Multiple choice, short answer, coding tasks, math sets, language proficiency.
Performance-Based & Work Samples: Case studies, labs, practicals, role-plays, simulations.
Psychometric & Personality: Interests, motivations, temperament, values, and traits (e.g., MAPP).
Aptitude & Cognitive: Reasoning, problem-solving, spatial/quantitative/verbal ability.
Situational Judgment (SJT): Scenario-based decisions that mirror real work.
360° & Feedback Instruments: Multi-rater insight on behaviors and competencies.
Surveys vs. Assessments: Surveys capture opinions; assessments measure against criteria (skills, standards, competencies) and yield scores you can compare over time.
Academia & Research: Validated instruments for studies, norming, item banks, and longitudinal measurement.

How Assessments Are Scored

Criterion-Referenced: Scores are compared to a fixed standard (e.g., 80% = pass)
Norm-Referenced: Scores are compared to a representative group (percentiles).
Ipsative (Most/Least): Respondents rank options against themselves to surface preferences.
Rubrics & Partial Credit: Performance tasks scored on defined dimensions/levels.
Adaptive Testing: Item difficulty adjusts in real time for faster, more precise measures.

What Makes a Good Assessment?

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Validity

Measures what it claims to measure (content, construct, criterion).

Reliability

Produces consistent results across time and populations.

Fairness & Accessibility

Minimizes bias; supports accommodations; adheres to WCAG.

Security & Integrity

Item banks, randomization, proctoring/monitoring when required.

Actionable Reporting

Clear feedback, cut scores, and next-step guidance.

Privacy & Compliance

Thoughtful handling of personal data (e.g., GDPR/FERPA where applicable).

Why Career & College Assessments Matter

Identify Strengths & Interests

Reveal energizers and aptitudes that predict sustained engagement.

Choose the Right Major or Path

Align coursework and credentials with real opportunities.

Align Skills & Experience

Map gaps; plan targeted upskilling.

Make Informed Decisions

Use data, not guesswork, to plan education and careers.

The Planning Cycle: Plan goals → Do an assessment → Check results → Act on insights (select programs, roles, or development plans).

Spotlight: The MAPP™ Career Assessment

The MAPP (Motivational Appraisal of Personal Potential) is a premier career interest and motivation assessment trusted since 1995 by millions of users and thousands of coaches, schools, and employers.

Understand your motivations & strengths: A plain-language profile of what drives you.
Choose the best education & career path: Match your pattern to real roles and programs.
Get personalized guidance: Turn insights into action majors to explore, roles to target, skills to build.

Use MAPP to inform college selection, career pivots, hiring and promotion decisions, and coaching anywhere fit matters.

Assessment.com: Take, Create, and Explore All in One Place

Take: Access validated instruments (e.g., MAPP), skills tests, and micro-assessments.
Create (AI or Manual): Our builder helps you design custom tests and rubrics; blueprint by skills/competencies; set keys, distractors, and cut scores.
Explore the Marketplace: Browse and publish assessments across leadership, EQ, technical skills, compliance, and more. Or sell globally by listing your assessment or test in our global marketplace all enabled with Stripe payments processing & payouts.
Analyze: Dashboards, cohort comparisons, unified reporting, and exports.
Integrate: Plug-and-play API to your LMS/ATS/HRIS; single sign-on; webhooks.
Learn from Errors: Turn missed items into micro-lessons, retakes, and curated videos.
RoleMatch AI: Build success profiles from top performers; score candidates and employees against your model for hiring, promotion, and development.
International Usage: With learners, professionals, coaches, and enterprises in 167+ countries, Assessment.com delivers true global reach. Teams launch and take assessments across time zones with multilingual delivery, localized UX, and currency support while unified analytics keep results comparable worldwide. Our marketplace helps creators publish once and sell everywhere, and our privacy-first infrastructure aligns with major international standards (e.g., GDPR). Whether you’re a school network in APAC, a recruiter in Europe, or a solo coach in LATAM, you can design, deliver, and scale globally from day one.

FAQs

Is an assessment the same as a test?
A test is a type of assessment. Assessments also include portfolios, observations, performance tasks, simulations, and 360° feedback any structured method to gather evidence and inform decisions.

Can assessments predict job success?
They can improve prediction when valid, reliable, and combined with structured interviews, work samples, and job-relevant criteria.

Are AI-assisted assessments valid?
AI can speed item creation and feedback. Validity still depends on clear constructs, expert review, piloting, and ongoing calibration all of which can be supported, tuned & trained on Assessment.com.

Will I see my results?
Yes individuals and organizations receive clear, actionable results and/or reports appropriate to the use case and privacy settings.

Get Started

Individuals: Discover strengths, explore majors and careers, and create a lifelong profile start with MAPP.
Organizations: Hire smarter, certify skills, meet compliance, and build talent pipelines with custom or off-the-shelf assessments.
Coaches & Schools: Run programs at scale; use our marketplace and dashboards to guide students and clients.

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Discover your next step or design the test that reveals it.
Start exploring on Assessment.com today.

What is an Assessment?

Where Assessments Are Used (Beyond the Classroom)

Common Assessment Types

How Assessments Are Scored