Modeling Job Performance

College of Business Administration
Department of Management and Organizations
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242

FINAL REPORT

Modeling Job Performance:
Is There a General Factor?

by

Chockalingam Viswesvara

August 1993
Prepared for:

Defense Personnel Security Research Center
Under the

Office of Naval Research
N00014-92-J-4040

19950516 050

Approved for PublicDistribution: Distribution Unlimited
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not
reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the
U.S. Government.

Gx'iüD 0

 forming composites of job performance

'c; differencial prediction, a^d 'd

'•irvcr.v

valicity of the different sources of performance evaluation,
are discussed.

«TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
LIST OF TABLES .

IV

CHAPTER
I.

INTRODUCTION

1

Importance of Establishing the
Intercorrelations
The Latent Structure of Job Performance...'.'.'.'
II.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Intercorrelations Between Job Performance
Measures
Factor Analysis of Correlations
..
Identifying Job Dimensions Based on
Inventory of Tasks
Task Surveys
Observation of Incumbents....
Critical Incident Techniques
Meta-Analytic Cumulation Over Pairs of
Job Performance Measures
Hypothesized Latent Structures of Job
Performance
Problems and Limitations

Ill.

METHOD
Database Description
Inclusion Criter_a
Data Coded/Extracted from Primary
Studies
Psychometric Meta-Ar.aivses .
Confirmatory Factor Analysis .' .' .' .' .' .' .' .' .' ......

IV.

RESULTSTrue Score Correiations
Confirmatory Factor .Analyses 'Results........ '.
Two Level Hierarchical Models
..
Three Level Hierarchical Models'

iMPLic;.r:cNs
Cor.verger.cy Between S:\i_--sa :f Zva~ua:. ic
Implications for I if ferer.r ■ al ?reu:ctio:
Forming Composites of Iirreren*: J:b
Performance Measures
APPENDIX A.

KEY .-JCRDS USED I\ sE'.R'. DATA3ASES

APPENDIX B.

JOURNALSSEARCHED

APPENDIX C.

LIST OF CRITERIA . .

APPENDIX D.

LIST OF STUDIES INCLULEI 'N THE DATABASE .

REFERENCES

.3 ELEi-7. JN:C

..

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A theory is an explanation of a phenomenon in terms of
the processes that cause it (Hunter & Schmidt, 1990a, ch.
1).

The development of a theory is an important task in

all sciences (Campbell, 1990a; Schmidt, 1992),and an
explanation of a phenomenon in terms of the processes that
cause it involves identifying functional relations between
constructs.

All theories in science mainly concern

statements about constructs rather than specific,
observable variables or measures (Nunnally, 1978, p.85).
An important construct that is widely used in many
theories in industrial/organizational psychology,organizational behavior, and human resources management
(personnel selection, training, and performance evaluation)
in general, and personnel selection in particular, is the
construct of job performance.

Job performance is an

important dependent variable in industrial/organizational
psychology (Schmidt & Hunter, 1992).

To date most

researchers focusing on the construct of jobperformance
have confined themselves to particular situations and
settings with no attempt to generalize the findings.

Also

there has been an emphasis on prediction and practical
application rather than explanation and theory building.

The consequence of these two trends has been a
proliferation of various measures of job performance in the
literature (Smith, 197 6).

Virtually everymeasurable

individual differences dimension thought to be relevant to
the productivity, efficiency, or profitability of the unit
or organization has been used as a measure of job
performance.

Absenteeism, productivity ratings, violence

on the job, and teamwork ratings are some examples of the
variety of measures used.
A question that remains largely unaddressed is the
extent to which...