Assessing Employee Performance: The Criterion Problem

Question 1

____________________ are most often conducted in organizations to facilitate decisions about employee raises and bonuses and provide employees with feedback about their performance, but they are also used to help determine training needs, make decisions about promotions, and validate selection procedures.

Answer 1

Performance assessments.

Question 2

A _______________ is a systematic method for collecting the information needed to describe job requirements. Its results serve as the basis for developing criterion measures and also provide information that facilitates work force planning and training program design, assists with decisions about job redesign, and helps identify the causes of accidents and other safety-related problems.

Answer 2

Job analysis.

Question 3

Methods of Job-Analysis: ________________ provide information about the characteristics of the tasks that are performed on the job.

Answer 3

Job-oriented methods.

Question 4

Methods of Job-Analysis: __________________ provide information about the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) that a worker needs to perform the job successfully.

Answer 4

Worker-oriented methods.

Question 5

The _________________________ PAQ is completed by the job holder, the supervisor, or a job analyst and provides quantitative information on six dimensions of worker activity (e.g., information input, work output, interpersonal activities). It is an example of a ________________ method.

Answer 5

• Position Analysis Questionnaire
• Worker-oriented

Question 6

A _________________ is conducted to clarify the requirements of the job, while a __________________ is performed to determine the worth of jobs in order to set salaries and wages.

Answer 6

• Job Analysis
• Job Evaluation

Question 7

Job evaluation techniques are often used to establish __________________ - i.e., to ensure that people who are performing comparable work receive comparable pay. This involves using the same job evaluation technique (usually a point system) for all jobs within an organization so that wages are established on the basis of each job’s inherent value rather than on the job title or on who usually performs the job.

Answer 7

Comparable worth.

Bonus: Has been used to reduce gender-based pay disparity, but some have criticized the efficacy of this based upon biased methods of job evaluation.

Question 8

Criterion measures are classified as ________________ or _______________.

Answer 8

• Objective
• Subjective

Question 9

_____________________ criterion measures include quantitative measures of production (i.e., units sold) and certain types of personnel data (e.g., accidents, absenteeism). They can be biased by situational factors such as differences in equipment, territory, or supplies, and some important aspects of job effectiveness (e.g., cooperation) cannot be assessed with these measures.

Answer 9

Objective (direct) measures.

Question 10

___________________ criterion measures are the most frequently used performance assessment techniques in organizations and usually take the form of ratings that reflect the judgement of the rater. Ratings by an employee’s immediate supervisor are the most common.

Answer 10

Subjective.

Question 11

With respect to subjective criterion measures, studies have found that:

a) _________-ratings tend to be the most lenient but are less susceptible to the halo bias
b) ____________ ratings are generally the most reliable
c) ____________ ratings are particularly good for predicting training success and subsequent promotions
d) Subordinate, peer, and supervisor ratings usually agree more with eachother than with _________-ratings

Answer 11

• Self
• Supervisor
• Peer
• Self

Question 12

The ______________ criterion is also known as the conceptual or theoretical criterion and refers to an accurate and complete measure of performance, while the ______________ criterion is the way that performance is actually measured.

Answer 12

• Ultimate
• Actual

Bonus: E.g., For a therapist, the ultimate criterion might be “provides effective services,” and the actual criterion might be a client survey of satisfaction with therapy.

Question 13

Criterion _____________ refers to the actual criterion’s construct validity - i.e., the degree to which it measures the ultimate criterion.

Answer 13

Relevance.

Question 14

_____________ refers to the degree to which an actual criterion does not measure all aspects of the ultimate criterion and is one of the factors that limits criterion relevance.

Answer 14

Deficiency.

Question 15

__________________ is another factor that limits relevance and occurs when an actual criterion assesses factors other than those it was designed to measure.

Answer 15

Criterion contamination.

Question 16

Subjective criterion measures are characterized as ________________ or _______________.

Answer 16

• Relative
• Absolute

Question 17

________________ techniques require the rater to compare the performance of two or more employees, while _____________ techniques provide information on a ratee’s performance without reference or comparison to other employees.

Answer 17

• Relative (comparative)
• Absolute

Question 18

An advantage of the relative techniques is that they can help alleviate ___________, but they force the rater to place ratees at high or low performance levels, even when most or all employees are performing at about the same level, they are prohibited by law for most federal jobs, raters and ratees often dislike them, and they are less useful than absolute measures for obtaining the information needed to provide employees with specific feedbackabout their job performance.

Answer 18

Rater biases.

Question 19

When using the __________________ technique, the rater compares each ratee with every other ratee in pairs on one or more dimensions of job performance. The primary disadvantage of this method is that it becomes increasingly cumbersome to use as the number of ratees increases.

Answer 19

• Paired Comparison
• Type: Relative

Question 20

The _____________________ technique is similar to “grading on the curve” and involves assigning ratees to a limited number of categories based on a predefined normal distribution on one or more dimensions of job performance (e.g., lowest 10%, next 20%, middle 40%, next 20%, highest 10%). A disadvantage of this technique is that it may yield erroneous data if the performance of ratees is not actually normally distributed.

Answer 20

• Forced Distribution
• Type: Relative

Question 21

The ________________ technique involves first deriving a checklist of critical incidents by having the supervisor observe employees while they work and record specific behaviors that are associated with outstanding or poor performance. Then, when using the technique for performance appraisal, the rater marks those items in the checklist that apply to the ratee. The primary advantage of this method is that it provides useful information for employee feedback; the primary disadvantages are that its development requires close supervision of employees and accurate recordkeeping by the rater; it addresses only critical (extreme) job behaviors, not typical ones; and it does not indicate the frequency or degree to which a behavior occurs.

Answer 21

• Critical Incident
• Type: Absolute

Question 22

Each item in a ________________________ consists of two to four alternatives that are considered to be about equal in terms of desirability, and the rater selects the alternative that best or least describes the ratee. Although this technique can help reduce rater biases, it is time-consuming to develop and is often disliked by raters.

Answer 22

• Forced-choice Rating Scale
• Type: Absolute

Question 23

Use of a _____________________ requires the rater to indicate on a Likert-type scale the ratee’s level of performance on one or several dimensions. These are highly susceptible to rater biases, but their accuracy is improved when points on the scale are anchored with descriptions of specific job behaviors.

Answer 23

• Graphic Rating Scale
• Type: Absolute

Question 24

When developing ____________, supervisors or others familiar with the job:

1) Identify several independent dimensions of job behavior
2) Identify several behavioral anchors (critical incidents) for each dimension
3) Order and number the behavioral anchors within each dimension from least to most positive or desirable

The rater chooses the one behavior for each dimension that best describes the employee. The primary disadvantage of this method is the amount of time required to develop the scale.

Answer 24

• Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS)
• Type: Absolute

Question 25

_______________ Bias: This occurs when a rater tends to avoid the middle range of a rating scale and, instead, rates all employees as either high or low on all dimensions of job performance.

Answer 25

Leniency/Strictness Bias.

Question 26

________________ Bias: Refers to a rater’s consistent use of only the middle range of the rating scale.

Answer 26

Central Tendency Bias.

Question 27

___________ Bias: Occurs when a rater’s evaluation of an employee on one dimension of job performance affects his/her evaluation of that employee on other unrelated dimensions or when the rater’s general impression of an employee influences how the rater rates the employee on all dimensions of job performance. This can be either “positive” or “negative.”

Answer 27

Halo Bias.

Question 28

__________________ training provides raters with a common conception of the multidimensional nature of job performance and of what constitutes effective and ineffective performance on each dimension.

Answer 28

Frame-of-reference training.

Question 29

Rater bias can also be reduced by having raters rate __________ behaviors rather than ___________ behaviors or traits.

Answer 29

• Specific
• Global