About the Assessment of Personal Goals Measurement Tools
The Assessment of Personal Goals and its associated suite of measurement tools is intended to elevate the visibility and reputation of the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) at George Mason University within the ranks of scholars and academic leaders in these fields. The centerpiece of this initiative is the publication of Motivating Faculty: How to Optimize Productivity and Well-Being in an Era of Scarce Resources, an innovative book that details the theory-based administrative experiments that helped CEHD transcend the limitations of a start-up research university and contribute to Mason’s rapid ascent to R1 status among American universities. As one reviewer (a Provost and Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs) explains, Motivating Faculty “provides the tools to create a resilient, high-achieving academic culture. It is a vital guide for anyone committed to the ‘thrive together’ philosophy in modern academia.”
Among these tools are integrative theories of motivation and optimal functioning that have inspired the creation of motivational assessments designed to measure the strength of goal themes that shape human development, individually and collectively, and that can help predict goodness-of-fit and future success in professorial and academic leadership roles. These assessment tools include the Taxonomy of Human Goals, the Assessment of Personal Goals (APG), the APG Personal Application Guide, the Assessment of Core Goals (ACG), and the Assessment of Personal Agency Belief Patterns (APAB). Making these tools available to the academic community and to the public at large will help fuel the image championed by Motivating Faculty of an academic unit that is innovative and scholarly, but also practical and deeply invested in making CEHD a great place to work.
The author of Motivating Faculty, emeritus Professor Martin Ford, oversees the integrity and use of the measurement tools included within the Assessment of Personal Goals (APG)©.
Most goal assessments focus on surface-level goals. In contrast, the Assessment of Personal Goals (APG)© and its companion measure, the Assessment of Core Goals (ACG)©, focus on the underlying motives that are at the core of your identity and personality.