Job Analysis & Performance Assessment Flashcards
An advantage of behviourally anchored rating scales (BARS) is that they:
A: are easy to develop
B: are aligned with organizational values and goals
C: provide an objective (versus subjective) measure of job performance
D: provide information that’s useful for performance feedback.
D is correct. Advantages of BARS are that the behavioural anchors help reduce rater biases and provide useful information for employee feedback. Disadvantages are that they’re time-consuming to develop and they’re job specific, which means that different scales must be developed for different jobs.
Which of the following is used to help establish comparable worth?
A. job specification
B. needs analysis
C. organizational analysis
D. job evaluation
Answer D is correct. A job evaluation is conducted to facilitate decisions related to compensation. It’s often used to establish comparable worth, which is the principle that workers who perform jobs that require the same skills and responsibilities or that are of comparable value to the employer should be paid the same.
The “forced distribution” is a(n):
A. absolute measure of job performance.
B. relative measure of job performance.
C. worker-oriented method of job analysis.
D. work-oriented method of job analysis.
Answer B is correct. The forced distribution is a relative rating scale that requires the rater to assign a certain percent of employees to prespecified performance categories for each performance dimension.
Frame-of-reference training is useful for which of the following?
A. improving the accuracy of job performance ratings
B. improving the accuracy of job selection techniques
C. ensuring that trainees apply newly acquired skills to job tasks
D. ensuring the accuracy of job analysis results
Answer A is correct. Frame-of-reference (FOR) training is a type of rater training that involves ensuring that trainees understand the multidimensional nature of job performance and the organization’s definition of successful and unsuccessful performance and giving trainees opportunities to practice assigning ratings and receive feedback about their rating accuracy.
To identify the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) that workers must have to perform a job successfully, you would conduct a:
A. job evaluation.
B. job analysis.
C. needs analysis.
D. task analysis
Answer B is correct. A job analysis is a systematic procedure for identifying the tasks required to perform the job successfully and/or the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics of workers that are required to perform those tasks.
____________ is occurring when ratings on a measure of job performance are affected by non-performance factors.
A. Criterion contamination
B. Criterion deficiency
C. The contrast error
D. The halo effect
Answer A is correct. Criterion contamination occurs when a performance (criterion) measure is affected by factors unrelated to job performance – for example, when a supervisor’s performance ratings of employees are affected by an employee’s gender or race or by the supervisor’s knowledge of how well an employee did on the predictors that were used to hire him or her.
A positive halo error occurs when:
A. a rater gives all employees high ratings on a measure of job performance, regardless of their actual performance.
B. a rater who just rated a below-average employee gives a subsequent employee higher performance ratings than she deserves.
C. a rater consistently rates employees who seem similar to him more favorably than employees who seem dissimilar.
D. a rater who views one performance dimension as being most important rates employees who score high on that dimension high on all other dimensions.
Answer D is correct. The halo error occurs when a rater’s rating of an employee on one dimension of job performance affects how the rater rates the employee on all other dimensions, even when they’re unrelated to that dimension. The halo error can be positive or negative.
When rating employee performance, a supervisor’s ratings of one employee are often biased in an upward or downward way due to the supervisor’s comparison of that employee to another employee the supervisor just evaluated. The supervisor is exhibiting which of the following?
A. halo error
B. leniency/strictness bias
C. contrast error
D. recency effect
Answer C is correct. The contrast error occurs when a rater’s ratings of an employee’s performance are affected by the performance of a previously evaluated employee.
