A case study was done of a large, private, research university's in-house effort to engage in assessment of the quality of faculty worklife, and to describe the variety of political, logistical, fiscal and data base management issues which arose from the largely faculty-directed and volunteer effort. Prompted by learning of efforts to create a national data base on quality of academic worklife, this institution undertook its own assessment. The case study of this effort developed from participant-observer collected data which included interviews, systematic notes, and minutes of meetings held by the Faculty Senate Task Force on Faculty Assessment. The assessment process itself began with the development of the Task Force, a series of "town meetings" in which faculty met to voice their opinions, and development and administration of a survey. Nearly 300 individuals participated in the meetings and 789 faculty, more than 50 percent, returned the survey. Lessons learned were characterized as a double-loop: faculty learned lessons and incorporated what they learned into new patterns of behavior and attitudes. Other lessons were political, logistical, fiscal, data-base related, and methodological. Throughout, the study results emphasized the inevitability of institutional politics as part of the process. Thirty references are included. (JB)