Toward Measures of High-Level Competencies: A Re-examination of McClelland's Distinction Between Needs and Values

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Abstract
McClelland has argued that it is essential to distinguish sharply both between operant and respondent measures and between needs and values. Further, that it is not possible to develop respondent measures of needs. In this paper, it is argued that there are alternative explanations of the results which led McClelland to these conclusions. Thereafter, it is shown that McClelland's measures of needs are best understood as indices of the number of important competencies which people bring to bear to reach goals they value. The measurement paradigm embedded in these measures conflicts with the dominant psychometric paradigm. McClelland's indices are neither valuefree nor internally-consistent; they are value-based, and the scores, like multiple regression coefficients, involve summing across independent predictors of performance. This new understanding of the psychometric principles on which McClelland's measures are based points to ways in which respondent measures of needs can be developed. However, more importantly, it offers a basis on which it would be possible to develop indices of a range of vitally important human qualities, like initiative and the ability to identify and solve problems, which have eluded psychometricians for over a century.

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