The assessment process in the Bell System's Management Progress Study is described, and the results of several analyses of the process are presented. Included are studies of assessment staff evaluations, contributions to the process of selected techniques, and relationships of assessment data to subsequent progress in management. The results, based on 355 young managers, indicate that the evaluations by the assessment staffs were influenced considerably by their overall judgments of the men assessed but also made many intraindividual discriminations. The results also show that all of the techniques studied made at least some contribution to the judgments of the assessors. Situational methods (group exercises and In-Basket) had considerable influence; paper-and-pencil ability tests had somewhat less influence; personality questionnaires were given the least weight. (Projective methods and interviews were not included in the analyses but are being studied.) The relationships between assessor judgments and subsequent progress in management, though covering only a relatively short time period, indicate that the assessors' predictions were quite accurate. The results also show that a complex of personal characteristics is more predictive of progress than any single characteristic. Some of the characteristics, however, appear to have higher relationships to progress than do others. Of the techniques studied the situational methods and paper-and-pencil ability tests are more predictive of progress than the personality questionnaires.

The past two decades have witnessed demographic, social, and economic changes that have affected the nature of psychology. The Committee on Employment and Human Resources of the American Psychological Association (APA), based on an examination of available data, identified six trends with major implications for psychology and the APA: changes in the specialization of new doctorate recipients in psychology, the quality of doctoral training, participation in the field by women and minorities, the employment of psychologists, and the composition of APA. This article discusses these trends and their implications.

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Although the assessment center is an ideal method for the study of lives, it has been used for that purpose only in a few landmark investigations. One of these, Ae Management Progress Study, has evaluated participants in repeated assessment centers over a period of years. Data from that study include an analysis of individual factors in managerial success. Several of these are personality/motivational in nature. In addition, personality characteristics are strongly related to key managerial abilities. Recommendations are made for enhancing the contribution of assessment centers to the study of lives. These include methodological improvements, new participant populations, and focusing on life roles other than occupational.