The Six Performance Characteristics rating, An Alverno College assessment technique used in the outcome-centered liberal arts curriculum, is discussed. The technique provides a means for faculty to judge students in a systematic way over time on developmental characteristics that apply to their performance across disciplines and across competence areas. The six characteristics were integration, independence, creativity, self-awareness, commitment, and habituality. Ratings on the performance characteristics were conducted on all classes during 1979-1982 as part of a program validation. Based on a longitudinal study sample of two consecutive entering classes, a single factor was found to account for 90 percent of the variance in ratings on each characteristic on three occasions. Using the single factor, it was found that students were rated at significantly higher levels over time, corroborating the cross-sectional evidence for the developmental character of the procedure. Relationships between the Six Performance Characteristics factor and the measures of human potential revealed that the faculty were making judgments based on a general dimension associated with several external criterion measures of intellectual, ego, and moral development. (Author/SW)