Description
The CernySmith Assessment consists of 68 objective questions and 10 subjective write-in questions that measure and describe the impact of change and stress as it relates to the adjustment and well-being of people in their own culture or living and working cross-culturally.
The CSA is online and is designed for people 14 years and older. The testing is self-managed, automated, and takes about 15 minutes to complete. After completion, the results are immediately generated for download in a personalized report. The self-discovery and coaching reports use nonjudgmental language and provide a balanced perspective of both strengths and challenges. The CSA includes strategies and tips on how to enhance transitions and adjustments.
The CSA provides a current stress-skills snapshot of adjustment during change and transition experiences. For overseas employees and/or family members, this assessment can be taken pre-field as a way to create baseline data that can be compared to any later CSA taken on-field/post-field. On-field and post-field assessments can be used for skill development tracking and re-entry assessing. It can be used once to assess adjustment, periodically (quarterly, annually), or whenever desired. It can also be used in debriefing settings including personal stresses, family stresses, and team stresses. [2]
The assessment is available in 6 versions.
| CSA-Standard (CSA-SD) | For Everyone and their families |
| CSA-Business (CSA-B) | For Business employees and their families |
| CSA-Diplomat (CSA-D) | For Diplomats and their families |
| CSA-Military (CSA-M) | For Military Personnel and their families |
| CSA-Non-Profit (CSA-N) | For NGO employees and their families |
| CSA-Student (CSA-S) | For Students |
CSA Reports come in three versions: The CSA-Brief, the CSA-Feedback, and the CSA-Team.
The CSA-Brief is a concise 6 page, self-discovery and coaching report.
The CSA-Feedback is a 10-page report that provides personalized analysis of results for self-discovery and/or coaching by a certified CSA coach (mentor or counselor). The CSA-Feedback Report, when combined with performance based coaching can identify strengths and challenges and recommend practical steps in order to maximize performance and manage stress. [4]
The CSA-Team (CSA-TR) is a 14-page report for teams and groups generated from 10 or more individualized reports. It can be used by companies, teams, and organizations to track company HR trends and progress. It provides data for analyzing group characteristics, tracking the impact of organizational policies, and assessing training needs.
CSA Domains and Scales with Cronbach's alpha Reliabilities
The CSA measures stress on 15 scales within 5 broad areas of adjustment: Organizational, Cultural, Relational, Resilience, and Foundational. [2]
| Organizational Domain (.85) |
| Organizational Relationship (.83) |
| Organizational Support (.76) |
| Workload (.77) |
| Cultural Domain (.83) |
| Adaptation (.76) |
| Transitions (.67) |
| Situational Crisis (.74) |
| Relational Domain (.80) |
| Effective Relationships (.78) |
| Family Adjustment (.78) |
| Extended Family/Friends (.65) |
| Resilience Domain (.83) |
| Well-being (.75) |
| Past Stresses (.69) |
| Focus (.66) |
| Foundational Domain (.83) |
| Spirituality (.85) |
| Health (.61) |
| Habits (.74) |
|
Research
Starting in 2000 Cerny and Smith researched and normed the CHOPS 100 with major changes in item content and wording. They randomized the items and then developed four sector-oriented 100 item assessment versions of the CSAI: Business/Corporate (BC), Civil/Government (CG), Humanitarian/Relief (HR), and Military (M).[4]
From February 2003 to August 2004, a total of 1,133 expatriates participated in the validation of the assessment. The average age was 42 with the range encompassing ages 13 through 77. Collectively, participants lived and worked in 130 different countries representing 46 different passport countries.[4]
Emily Hervey of Regent University provided additional validity support for the CSA in her 2009 research focused on the cultural transitions and the adjustment to college of Third Culture students.[6] In 2010 Kathryn Rosenbush of George Washington University found the CSA to be a comprehensive measure of intercultural adjustment researching the impact of balanced family communication styles on the intercultural adjustment of employee families from a major multi-national corporation.[7] She and Maria Cseh of George Washington University published results of the study in Human Resource Development International (2012).
Keith Edwards of Rosemead Graduate School of Biola University along with Kathryn Rosenbush and Carley Dodd of Abilene Christian University conducted a 2014 analysis of CSA data. Following is the abstract from their yet unpublished research article titled Development of CSA Expatriate Adjustment Measures. The manuscript is in the submission process for peer review and publication. The abstract reads:
"This study reports a psychometric analysis of the CernySmithTM Adjustment Survey (CSA) developed for use with expatriate workers and family members. The CSA was designed to measure expatriate worker adjustment on 20 scales in 5 content domains (Organizational, Cultural, Relational, Resilience, and Foundational). The present study reports a revision of the CSA based on data from 1,133 employees of non-profit and business organizations in 130 host countries from 46 passport countries. The analyses were conducted in 3 phases. First, uni-dimensionality of each a priori content scale was established using Principle Components Analyses. Then, Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients were calculated for each scale. Second, Principle Components Analyses were conducted to examine the discriminate validity of the scale items within each of the 5 domains. Finally, a second-order principle components analysis of the 15 scales scores identified 3 broad domains of adjustment identified as Work Management, Relationship Management, and Self-Management. The content and psychometric structure of the CSA are discussed in light of the three primary scales of expatriate employee adjustment identified by Black et al. (1991) and the four couple and spouse adjustment scales identified by Brown (2008). The authors suggest that the CSA has the potential of increasing the robustness of expatriate adjustment assessment (Hippler et al., 2014) with the addition of the resilience (well-being, past stresses, and focus) and personal foundation (spirituality, health, and habits) domains."
Psychological testing is the administration of psychological tests. Psychological tests are administered by trained evaluators. A person's responses are evaluated according to carefully prescribed guidelines. Scores are thought to reflect individual or group differences in the construct the test purports to measure. The science behind psychological testing is psychometrics.
Stress management is a wide spectrum of techniques and psychotherapies aimed at controlling a person's level of stress, especially chronic stress, usually for the purpose of and for the motive of improving everyday functioning. Stress produces numerous physical and mental symptoms which vary according to each individual's situational factors. These can include a decline in physical health as well as depression. The process of stress management is named as one of the keys to a happy and successful life in modern society. Life often delivers numerous demands that can be difficult to handle, but stress management provides a number of ways to manage anxiety and maintain overall well-being.
Cultural intelligence or cultural quotient (CQ) is the capability to relate and work effectively across cultures, bearing similarity to the term cultural agility. The term has been used in business, education, government and academic research contexts. Originally, the term cultural intelligence and the abbreviation "CQ" was developed by the research done by Christopher Earley (2002) and Earley and Soon Ang (2003). During the same period, researchers David Thomas and Kerr Inkson worked on a complementary framework of CQ as well. A few years later, Ang Soon and Linn Van Dyne worked on a scale development of the CQ construct as a researched-based way of measuring and predicting intercultural performance.
Cultural competence, also known as intercultural competence, is a range of cognitive, affective, and behavioural skills that lead to effective and appropriate communication with people of other cultures. Intercultural or cross-cultural education are terms used for the training to achieve cultural competence.
Suicide risk assessment is a process of estimating the likelihood for a person to attempt or die by suicide. The goal of a thorough risk assessment is to learn about the circumstances of an individual person with regard to suicide, including warning signs, risk factors, and protective factors. Risk for suicide is re-evaluated throughout the course of care to assess the patient's response to personal situational changes and clinical interventions. Accurate and defensible risk assessment requires a clinician to integrate a clinical judgment with the latest evidence-based practice, although accurate prediction of low base rate events, such as suicide, is inherently difficult and prone to false positives.
A self-report inventory is a type of psychological test in which a person fills out a survey or questionnaire with or without the help of an investigator. Self-report inventories often ask direct questions about personal interests, values, symptoms, behaviors, and traits or personality types. Inventories are different from tests in that there is no objectively correct answer; responses are based on opinions and subjective perceptions. Most self-report inventories are brief and can be taken or administered within five to 15 minutes, although some, such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), can take several hours to fully complete. They are popular because they can be inexpensive to give and to score, and their scores can often show good reliability.
In the study of psychology, neuroticism has been considered a fundamental personality trait. For example, in the Big Five approach to personality trait theory, individuals with high scores for neuroticism are more likely than average to be moody and to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness. Such people are thought to respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations, such as minor frustrations, as appearing hopelessly difficult. They are described as often being self-conscious and shy, and tending to have trouble controlling urges and delaying gratification.
The Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory – Fourth Edition (MCMI-IV) is the most recent edition of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory. The MCMI is a psychological assessment tool intended to provide information on personality traits and psychopathology, including specific mental disorders outlined in the DSM-5. It is intended for adults with at least a 5th grade reading level who are currently seeking mental health services. The MCMI was developed and standardized specifically on clinical populations, and the authors are very specific that it should not be used with the general population or adolescents. However, there is evidence base that shows that it may still retain validity on non-clinical populations, and so psychologists will sometimes administer the test to members of the general population, with caution. The concepts involved in the questions and their presentation make it unsuitable for those with below average intelligence or reading ability.
Psychometrics of racism is an emerging field that aims to measure the incidence and impacts of racism on the psychological well-being of people of all races. At present, there are few instruments that attempt to capture the experience of racism in all of its complexity.
Psychological evaluation is a method to assess an individual's behavior, personality, cognitive abilities, and several other domains. A common reason for a psychological evaluation is to identify psychological factors that may be inhibiting a person's ability to think, behave, or regulate emotion functionally or constructively. It is the mental equivalent of physical examination. Other psychological evaluations seek to better understand the individual's unique characteristics or personality to predict things like workplace performance or customer relationship management.
Positive affectivity (PA) is a human characteristic that describes how much people experience positive affects ; and as a consequence how they interact with others and with their surroundings.
A stress test, in financial terminology, is an analysis or simulation designed to determine the ability of a given financial instrument or financial institution to deal with an economic crisis. Instead of doing financial projection on a "best estimate" basis, a company or its regulators may do stress testing where they look at how robust a financial instrument is in certain crashes, a form of scenario analysis. They may test the instrument under, for example, the following stresses:
Third culture kids (TCK) or third culture individuals (TCI) are people who were raised in a culture other than their parents' or the culture of their country of nationality, and also live in a different environment during a significant part of their child development years. They typically are exposed to a greater volume and variety of cultural influences than those who grow up in one particular cultural setting. The term applies to both adults and children, as the term "kid" refers to the individual's formative or developmental years. However, for clarification, sometimes the term adult third culture kid (ATCK) is used.
Vulnerability refers to "the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally."
The Cyber Resilience Review (CRR) is an assessment method developed by the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It is a voluntary examination of operational resilience and cyber security practices offered at no cost by DHS to the operators of critical infrastructure and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments. The CRR has a service-oriented approach, meaning that one of the foundational principles of the CRR is that an organization deploys its assets to support specific operational missions. The CRR is offered in a facilitated workshop format and as a self-assessment package. The workshop version of the CRR is led by a DHS facilitator at a critical infrastructure facility. The workshop typically takes 6–8 hours to complete and draws on a cross section of personnel from the critical infrastructure organization. All information collected in a facilitated CRR is protected from disclosure by the Protected Critical Infrastructure Information Act of 2002. This information cannot be disclosed through a Freedom of Information Act request, used in civil litigation, or be used for regulatory purposes. The CRR Self-Assessment Package allows an organization to conduct an assessment without the need for direct DHS assistance. It is available for download from the DHS Critical Infrastructure Cyber Community Voluntary Program website. The package includes an automated data answer capture and report generation tool, a facilitation guide, comprehensive explanation of each question, and a crosswalk of CRR practices to the criteria of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework. The questions asked in the CRR and the resulting report are the same in both versions of the assessment. DHS partnered with the CERT Division of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University to design and deploy the CRR. The goals and practices found in the assessment are derived from the CERT Resilience Management Model (CERT-RMM) Version 1.0. The CRR was introduced in 2009 and received a significant revision in 2014.
The Dimensional Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (DOCS) is a 20-item self-report instrument that assesses the severity of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) symptoms along four empirically supported theme-based dimensions: (a) contamination, (b) responsibility for harm and mistakes, (c) incompleteness/symmetry, and (d) unacceptable (taboo) thoughts. The scale was developed in 2010 by a team of experts on OCD led by Jonathan Abramowitz, PhD to improve upon existing OCD measures and advance the assessment and understanding of OCD. The DOCS contains four subscales that have been shown to have good reliability, validity, diagnostic sensitivity, and sensitivity to treatment effects in a variety of settings cross-culturally and in different languages. As such, the DOCS meets the needs of clinicians and researchers who wish to measure current OCD symptoms or assess changes in symptoms over time.
The Scale of Protective Factors (SPF) is a measure of aspects of social relationships, planning behaviors and confidence. These factors contribute to psychological resilience in emerging adults and adults.
The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) was developed by Kathryn M. Connor and Jonathan R.T. Davidson as a means of assessing resilience. The CD-RISC is based on Connor and Davidson's operational definition of resilience, which is the ability to "thrive in the face of adversity." Since its development in 2003, the CD-RISC has been tested in several contexts with a variety of populations and has been modified into different versions.
The Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ) is an introspective psychological inventory consisting of 24 items pertaining to an individual's Psychological Capital (PsyCap), or positive psychological state of development. The PCQ was constructed by Fred Luthans, Bruce J. Avolio, and James B. Avey with the goal to assess the dimensions of PsyCap. The PCQ measures four dimensions of PsyCap: hope, efficacy, resiliency, and optimism. The PCQ takes between 10-15 minutes to complete and can be administered to individuals or groups. The PCQ is protected by copyright law and published by Mind Garden, Inc.
