The findings support a functional approach to the assessment of financial decision-making for both legal and clinical purposes, but raise concerns about mental incapacity legislation and assessment.

The findings suggest that the role of intellectual ability in determining financial decision-making abilities is only indirect, and that access to both basic skills education and everyday decision-making opportunities is crucial for maximizing capacity. The implications of this are discussed.

The process of examination marking is complex, requiring examiners to engage in a variety of cognitive operations. While consideration has been given to marking practices in a few specific contexts, those of General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examiners have yet to receive serious attention. This study's aims, therefore, were: first, to investigate the cognitive strategies used when marking GCSEs; and second, to interpret them within the context of psychological theories of human judgement. Two contrasting GCSE examination papers were considered: Mathematics used a 'points-based' marking scheme, while Business Studies relied on a 'levels-based' scheme. Small groups of experienced examiners marked script samples, and using a concurrent 'think aloud' method, verbal protocols were obtained. Using a semi-structured interview schedule, the examiners were then questioned retrospectively. Qualitative data analysis supported a model of five distinct cognitive marking strategies, which can be interpreted within dual-processing theories of judgement. The implications for GCSE marking are discussed.

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Internationally, many assessment systems rely predominantly on human raters to score examinations. Arguably, this facilitates the assessment of multiple sophisticated educational constructs, strengthening assessment validity. It can introduce subjectivity into the scoring process, however, engendering threats to accuracy. The present objectives are to examine some key qualitative data collection methods used internationally to research this potential trade‐off, and to consider some theoretical contexts within which the methods are usable. Self‐report methods such as Kelly's Repertory Grid, think aloud, stimulated recall, and the NASA task load index have yielded important insights into the competencies needed for scoring expertise, as well as the sequences of mental activity that scoring typically involves. Examples of new data and of recent studies are used to illustrate these methods’ strengths and weaknesses. This investigation has significance for assessment designers, developers and administrators. It may inform decisions on the methods’ applicability in American and other rater cognition research contexts.