Three basic areas of definition, measurement, and research, voiced as concerns by members of the National Council of Measurement in Education (NCME) to its Task Force on Measurement Problems in Competency-Based Programs, are used as an organizer for a sponsored symposia and the papers in this monograph. The problem of the definition of competency is addressed in two different ways. Chapter IV presents several different perspectives about how standards of performance may be set, while Chapter II addresses itself solely to the definition of the word "competency." Just as the authors of the seven papers differ in their positions concerning the efficacy of competency-based programs, they also use the word "competence" in different ways, which has real consequences for the way in which research and development efforts will be structured. If the construct definition is selected, then the process of validation of the instrumentation must take into account the framework in which the construct is operationalized, as argued in Chapter V. However, if the definition is considered to be that of setting standards of behavior, then different techniques would be used to validate the cut-off point for an instrument. (RL)