Performance-Based Assessment: a Methodology, for use in Selecting, Training and Evaluating Mediators
For a quick overview, the Executive Summary (Chapter 1) and
two other chapters of the Methodology are reproduced in sequence at the links below. The full text is also now available without charge. Originally published
1995 by the U.S. National Institute for Dispute Resolution, it is posted here as an Adobe Acrobat
(.pdf) file.
The brief overview on this page is not part of the Methodology itself; it is reprinted from NIDR News, July-August 1995.
Test Design Project concludes with publication of new Methodology
In 1990, a project to improve competency testing in dispute resolution began with no
budget, no name and a steering committee of five: Linda Singer, Frank Sander, Michael
Lewis, Howard Bellman and director Chris Honeyman. Later named the Test Design Project,
that effort now concludes with NIDR's publication of Performance-Based Assessment: A
Methodology, for use in selecting, training and evaluating mediators.
The project grew to include a number of distinguished participants, and the Methodology is the latest of many products that resulted. Among them were a $50,000 study, financed by the National Science Foundation, which spurred a North America-wide four-organization initiative to create a certification test for experienced family mediators, and an array of program-specific designs for selection and training methods, ranging from the San Diego Mediation Center to the U.S. State Department. The project has also influenced other initiatives, among them the Alaska Judicial Council's Consumer Guide to Selecting a Mediator, SPIDR's Sourcebook on qualifications and quality control, and a manual for training in-house mediators produced jointly by three federal agencies.
In 1993, NIDR published the Interim Guidelines for Selecting Mediators, the Project's first attempt at consensus definitions of mediators' functions, skills and selection methods. The Project solicited critiques of this work, which resulted in ten Negotiation Journal articles and many more discussions elsewhere. The 1995 Methodology is the project's response. Considerably longer than the Interim Guidelines it replaces, it includes tools for programs which wish to improve training methods rather than engage in rigorous selection, and gives special attention to concerns for the field's diversity.
