An experimental investigation of the impact of stated purpose on performance evaluation

Abstract

Teaching performances of two university instructors were evaluated by students in a junior-level management course. The first performance rated was a forty-two-minute, videotaped incident. The second situation involved a different group of students who evaluated the performance of a second instructor throughout a sixteen-week semester. The objective was to evaluate the impact of each of several stated purposes, for which performance evaluations were to be used, on the performance evaluation scores. It was felt that stated purpose was an additional nonperformance variable which could affect the evaluation of on-the-job performance. Six treatment groups (three reward- and three punishment-type purposes) and control group (no stated purpose) were compared. The method of evaluating the effect of the purposes was to vary each treatment variable such that Winer's Model I Single-factor analysis of Variance was an appropriate analysis. Twenty participants were assigned at random to each one of the seven treatment group in each of the two phases of the study.