To look forward, it is necessary to look back and learn from the past. Hence this diverse collection of histories provides an excellent opportunity to reflect on what a future assessment might look like globally. Across the regions the themes for the future of assessment were similar. These centered around the need to adapt tests, to incorporate more local or emic assessments, as well as the need to use more indigenous knowledge. There was a clear narrative of a lack of training and resources in countries that would typically be described as developing or as low- to middle-income countries. This need was also evident in countries that are relatively developed but engaged with psychological assessment later in their histories in comparison to the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, for example. Typically, countries that were colonized, especially those colonized by Britain, showed more developments in the field of assessment as they had more contact with early developments in the field. This chapter reflects on the international histories of assessment and provides an overarching view on what we assess, why we assess, who assesses, and how we assess. In so doing the chapter presents a possible blueprint for the way forward for assessment in the global village that will be equally accessible and applicable to all.

This chapter introduces the rationale for the book and provides some context for the chapters. Chapters are not just narrative accounts of the development of psychological assessment in a particular country or region. Authors were asked to situate the chapters somewhere between narrative and historiography. Hence the chapters assume a more critical stance in reporting the history of psychological assessment that recognizes that history is never fact and always represents the subjective position of the author. Authors have drawn from existing sources and research but have simultaneously explored the social positionings of such research. We hope that this allows for a richer and perhaps even more interesting account of the international history of psychological assessment. The book begins with the chapters from Africa, followed by those from the Arab-Levant, Europe, Asia, and Oceania, and concluding with chapters from the Americas.

Countries in Southern Africa face many social, development, economic, trade, education, health, diplomatic, defense, security, and political challenges. These countries also have a history of colonialism, liberatory struggle, and independence. Although the language of business and schooling is English for most of the countries, there are still huge chunks of the population that are illiterate and functionally illiterate. People also speak one or more indigenous languages. The majority of the countries in this region have high levels of unemployment and poverty. Ensuring that psychological assessments are appropriate and fair in these contexts is a huge challenge. When this challenge occurs in a poorly resourced setting against the background of social inequality, practitioners need to be highly resourceful, as well as culturally sensitive and ethically aware. This chapter discusses the historical development of psychological assessment in South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe demonstrating how the social and contextual factors interacted with assessment.

The chapter considers gender and personality research within the dispositional paradigm. It provides a brief discussion of current research to demonstrate the largely Western focus on empirical research on gender differences in personality traits. The chapter draws on our own research with the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI) in Chinese and non-Chinese samples, South African work on the etic NEO Personality Inventory - Revised (NEO-PI-R), and the development of the emic South African Personality Inventory (SAPI), and extraction of personality traits in the Arab Levant to present a more balanced picture of gender research in personality beyond the etic context. In so doing we illustrate the need for a more nuanced approach to understanding gender in personality psychology where gender is recognized alongside issues of culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality, etc. The chapter illustrates the value of incorporating intersectionality in understanding gender within the dispositional approach to personality.