Challenges of the Project
Although there is little doubt that teamwork
is an important life skill, the measurement of
teamwork in ALL presents specific challenges.
First, ALL will be the initial attempt to provide
a large-scale international assessment of
teamwork skills. As a result, a limited number
of methods and approaches exist as precedents.
Past international assessments have focused on
adult literacy (i.e., see IALS) as opposed to
interpersonal skills like teamwork. Therefore,
we expect to learn a great deal about teamwork
skills and their distribution in the adult
population across nations.
Second, unlike other life skills measured
by ALL, teamwork will likely be affected by
culture. Although we believe that a certain set
of core skills defines teamwork across all
cultures, the way in which these skills are
manifested within a team is likely to vary.
Therefore, we will not attempt to develop an
invariant set of items to be translated for use
in each nation. Rather, items will be modified
as necessary to take known cultural
differences into account.
Finally, and perhaps most challenging, is
the fact that most methods of assessing
teamwork skills require direct observation of
team performance (D. Baker & Salas, 1992;
1997; Brannick, Prince & Salas, 1997; Ilgen,
1999). Typically, team members are placed in
a scenario. Experts observe team behaviors
and provide performance ratings on specific
teamwork skills. This measurement approach
differs substantially from the approach to be
used in ALL. Here, the teamwork measure
will be a short paper-based instrument; no
opportunity for directly observing the
teamwork skills of the respondent will be
available. Thus, respondents’ teamwork skills
will have to be assessed indirectly instead of
directly. For ALL, we propose to measure the
knowledge of teamwork skills, attitude
towards teamwork, and past experience in
teams and then attempt to draw links between
these variables and team performance.
With these challenges in mind, we turn to
a discussion of the key components of
teamwork underlying our framework.
Because these domains will drive
development of the teamwork measures for
ALL, we draw heavily from the literature on
teams and on what is currently known about
teamwork.