Dl. Deadrick et Dg. Gardner, DISTRIBUTIONAL RATINGS OF PERFORMANCE LEVELS AND VARIABILITY - AN EXAMINATION OF RATING VALIDITY IN A FIELD SETTING, Group & organization management, 22(3), 1997, pp. 317-342
The performance distribution assessment (PDA) method was purported to
be a breakthrough in performance appraisal methodology; however, littl
e research has been conducted to determine the usefulness of this meth
od This article describes some of the critical features of the PDA met
hod and presents evidence supporting the validity of the PDA in an org
anizational setting. The performance and ability data of 397 sewing ma
chine operators were analyzed to determine the validity of multiple pe
rformance measures derived from the PDA, the relative accuracy of the
PDA compared with an evaluative rating method, and differential criter
ion-related validities for the multiple PDA performance measures. Resu
lts revealed significant correlations between the PDA-derived performa
nce measures and objective measures of job performance, differential c
orrelations between ability and the multiple PDA-derived performance m
easures, and equivalent levels of rating accuracy for the PDA and the
evaluative measure of typical performance. implications for research a
nd practice are discussed.