A framework for values-based assessment in promotion, tenure, and other academic evaluations

Recent years have seen a growing dissatisfaction with how academics and their scholarly work are evaluated, and a corresponding global proliferation of initiatives dedicated to assessment reform. A common theme across many of these initiatives is a call to center values, focusing on how incentives could be designed to better reward aspects like collaboration, equity, rigor, and transparency. While such values-based approaches have laid solid groundwork for academic institutions to think through and prioritize their values, we see a need for granular tools that can help institutions transform their values into actionable reforms. To that end, we present a framework, developed in part through workshops we ran at the 2023 Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology (COGDOP) Annual Meeting, the Association for Psychological Science (APS) Annual Convention, and the American Anthropological Association (AAA) Department Leaders Summer Institute. The framework includes 14 values (e.g. creativity, inclusivity, engagement, public good), and for each value, we outline some scoping considerations, representative academic activities or scholarly outputs, and possible behavioral indicators that could be incorporated into promotion and tenure evaluations. This framework is not exhaustive, and will likely vary depending on disciplinary or other contexts, but we hope it will serve as a starting point and encourage institutions to tackle assessment reforms with a values-based lens.