Assessment

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Assessment is a process for describing a particular piece of reality in aim to fulfill a certain information need in a decision-making situation. The word assessment can also mean the end product of this process, i.e. an assessment report of some kind. Often it is clear from the context whether the term assessment refers to the making of the report or the report itself. Methodologically, these are two different objects, called the assessment process and the assessment product, respectively.

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Question

What is a structure for an assessment so that it

• contains a description of a certain piece of reality R↻ ,
• the description is produced according to the use purposes of the product,
• describes all the relevant phenomena that connect the decision under consideration and outcomes of special interest (called indicators),
• combines value judgements with the descriptions of physical phenomena
• can be applied in any domain,
• inherits the main structure from universal objects,
• complies with the PSSP ontology,
• complies with decision analysis,
• complies with Bayesian networks?

Answer

All assessments aim to have a common structure so as to enable effective, partially automatic tools for the analysis of information. An assessment has a set of attributes, which have their own subattributes.

Attributes of an assessment

Attribute	Sub-attribute	Description
Name		Identifier for the assessment.
Scope		Defines the purpose, boundaries and contents of the assessment. Scope consist of subattributes.
	Question	What is the research question or -questions whose answers are sought by means of the assessment? What is the meaning of the assessment?
	Boundaries	Where are the boundaries of observation drawn? In other words, which factors are noted and which are left outside the observation.
	Intended use and users	Who is the assessment made for? Whose information needs does the assessment serve?
	Participants	Those who may participate in the making of the assessment. The minimum group of people for a successful assessment is always described. If some groups must be excluded, this must be explicitly motivated.
	Decisions	Which decisions and their options are included in the assessment? Furthermore, there might exist scenarios that are not decisions, for instance if some possibilities are excluded from the observation in order to clarify the situation. For example, one could ask which climate change adaptation acts should be executed in a situation where the average temperature rises over two degrees centigrade. In this case, all the scenarios where the temperature does not rise over two degrees are excluded from the assessment. This is clearly not a decision, but is treated as such by means of information technology.
	Timing	When does the assessment take place? When will it be finished? When will the actual decision be made?
Answer		Gives the best possible answers to the questions asked in scope based on the information collected. Answer is divided into two parts:
	Results	Answers to all of the research questions asked in all of the variables and the assessment. Also includes the results of the analyses mentioned in the rationale.
	Conclusions	A reasoning based on the answers about what this information means regarding the meaning of the assessment.
Rationale		Includes all the information that is required for a meaningful answer. Rationale includes multiple subattributes.
	Stakeholders	What stakeholders relate to the subject of the assessment? What are their interests and goals?
	Variables	What variables or descriptions of a particular phenomenon are needed in order to carry out the assessment? How do they relate to each other (through causation or other ways)? Among these it is necessary to distinguish three kinds of objects. Ordinary variables Describe a phenomenon in the physical world and are often studied by scientific means. Value variables Describe people's values or what they think of as good or bad. In practise, values are processed as though they could be processed by scientific means by making observations on people's behaviour and opinions. Methods Describe their subject indirectly by answering the question " how can I find the answer to question X?" When using a method, the answer can only be found when it is connected to the correct frame of reference. For example, a method may include emission factors for a car, but the emissions that are the subject of the question can only be calculated when another part of the assessment produces the information how many kilometres are driven. To be exact, methods are not variables, but are tabulated and included in graphs like variables are.
	Analyses	What statistical or other analyses can be made based on the information gathered? Typical analyses are decision analysis (which of the decision alternatives produces the best expected outcome) and value of data analysis (how large of a detriment to the decisionmaker do the uncertainties of different variables cause).
	Indices	What indices are used in the assessment and what are cut out as unnecessary and when?

See also

• Variable