Relationships between Contextual and Task Performance and Interrater Agreement: Are There Any?

PLoS One. 2015 Oct 16;10(10):e0139898. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0139898. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Work performance is one of the most important dependent variables in Work and Organizational Psychology. The main objective of this paper was to explore the relationships between citizenship performance and task performance measures obtained from different appraisers and their consistency through a seldom-used methodology, intraclass correlation coefficients. Participants were 135 public employees, the total staff in a local government department. Jobs were clustered into job families through a work analysis based on standard questionnaires. A task description technique was used to develop a performance appraisal questionnaire for each job family, with three versions: self-, supervisor-, and peer-evaluation, in addition to a measure of citizenship performance. Only when the self-appraisal bias is controlled, significant correlations appeared between task performance rates. However, intraclass correlations analyses show that only self- (contextual and task) performance measures are consistent, while interrater agreement disappears. These results provide some interesting clues about the procedure of appraisal instrument development, the role of appraisers, and the importance of choosing adequate consistency analysis methods.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Diagnostic Self Evaluation*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Task Performance and Analysis*
  • Work Performance*

Grants and funding

This study was framed within the projects eDCan and PSI2010-17327, financed by the regional government of the Canary Islands and the National Program of Fundamental Research Projects of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN), respectively.