When I used this instrument with a VEIL project, it was very helpful to know students’ self-measuring intercultural competence development. According to participants’ feedback on this instrument, it was also very useful because it doesn’t take long (about 10 minutes) and it’s very easy to fill out an electronic version. Comparison between retrospective pretest and posttest was very helpful to learn participants’ own assessment of their intercultural competence before and after a project. It’s also useful to compare the group in intercultural competence as well as understand an individual participant’s gains in intercultural competence.

The ASKS 2+ Survey was easy to use (via Qualtrics), quick to complete (~10 minutes to complete), and generated helpful data for assessing intercultural competence.  For my program, the ASKS 2+ Survey was used as a post retrospective pre-assessment to assess intercultural competence of a group of students who studied abroad during spring break 2022.  The survey was two-part: one set of prompts had students rank themselves before the study abroad experience, the other ranking themselves after the experience, and this was given after returning to the US at the conclusion of the study abroad course/experience.  The course design included a couple different intercultural learning activities (ICLs) throughout the semester during pre-departure meetings, journaling (with prompts to address different aspects of intercultural competence/awareness) while abroad. 

It was interesting (and exciting!) to see the students' perceived shift, on both an individual and group basis, toward greater intercultural competence in the responses to the post trip survey as compared to the retrospective pre-- I wasn't sure how much difference/shift we would see with a short-term program, but we were delighted to see that our ICLs, journaling, and in-country experience seemed to be transformational for participants.  It would be interesting to conduct the assessment as a true pre-/post-, giving it first before any study abroad-related activities, then including specific ICLs throughout a course/program, and finally giving the survey again at the end of the experience.