Assessing method for meta-professional competencies in Russian educational institutions

Abstract

University graduates may face challenges when solving actual business problems because of their lack of soft skills, which are often inferior to their hard skills. Their knowledge (hard skills) may be at a good level, but they often lack developed universal competencies (soft skills). The paper discusses the methodology for assessing the meta-professional competencies of university students based on the results of the pilot year of the project “Assessment and development of managerial competencies in Russian educational institutions”. The research developed psychometric methods and applied as assessment tools: a universal personality questionnaire, a vitality questionnaire, tests for the analysis of numerical and verbal information. The paper provides descriptions and justifications for the validity and tests reliability used to diagnose universal competencies, as well as the procedure for creating a composite construct. The authors propose a method for creating a composite score to combine the results of assessment using a battery of tests and questionnaires. The resulting composite score makes it possible to consider the links between the evaluated constructs and simplify the interpretation of the evaluation results.