Dr. Charles Calahan, a noted intercultural learning expert, has compared the attainment of intercultural competence with the metaphor of scaling one of the world's tallest mountains.  While some intercultural assessment instruments tell you how high you have gotten in your quest up the mountain (base camp, tree-line, pre-summit, summit), this instrument tells you whether you have the right tools to succeed in the journey: do you have the metaphorical equivalents of enough rope, oxygen, ice cleats, high-energy food packs, etc? In this reviewers professional opinion, it makes it one of the more student-centered and inclusive of the available proprietary survey instruments.