Singing is an omnipresent feature of musical cultures and occurs in many different forms and guises. Because of its variety and developmental nature, any assessment of singing needs to take careful account of the particular cultural context in which the observed behaviour occurs. The literature on singing indicates that the nature of the sample, the location, the social context, the type of singing task and the assessment method are all likely to be significant variables. An overview of singing assessment is presented in which the application of recent advances in speech science technology are set along- side more traditional assessment methods, with examples of assessment evidence from the project Singing Development in Early Childhood at the Roehampton Institute. © 1994, Sage Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.