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Vaishali's avatar

This is something I kept trying to convey to the organizations I worked in. I tried explaining that sport-specific and athlete-oriented assessments, especially in individual sports would be more meaningful, but I couldn't succeed. Here in India, there is almost like an obsession to administer tests without really putting a thought into what will even be helpful or not.

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Patrick's avatar

I think the best book to read in this area is "The Tyranny of Metrics" which isn't quite as anti-metrics as it may sound. It speaks largely to how we tend to measure what's easy, and not what matters.

For me as a budding practitioner, my concern is to demonstrate value, not just to my client or employer, but to myself. I want to get better at measurements and assessments, although I don't want to be reliant on them, I think they have a great deal of complimentary utility.

The approach I favour is like that of the US Federal Reserve Bank, and their "Beige Book" which gives a snapshot of the health of the US economy. It has metrics of course, but those metrics are coloured by anecdotes of behaviour that give life to the metrics. I think this serves to feed both the scientific and the story-minded among us.

Great article Russ!

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