How to assess intercultural competence?

Although its importance is more and more recognized, only few companies and organisations assess intercultural competence in a specific and structured way. Social skills are part of every assessment, but intercultural competence is mostly judged by an assessor concerning his or her subjective impression.

Intercultural competence can hardly be defined in numbers or in a percentage-profile, but many different tools allow a reliable statement:

• computer-based validity-testing by questioning
• computer-based simulation-tests
• structured biographical interviews
• simulation-games by interacting in groups and specific situations
• differentiating between respect/empathy, prejudices, frustration-tolerance and learning-/ contact-activity
• analyzing self-assurance and adaptation-tendency
• structuring mental, emotional and spiritual competence and related cross-connections

Using similar tests allows to increase the validity; using different tests allows to increase the evidency.