Browsing by Author "Donnelly, Laura Ferri"

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    Capturing utility judgments across jobs: toward understanding and generalization
    Donnelly, Laura Ferri (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1985)
    The recent increase in utility research has provided improved methods for estimating the standard deviation of performance in dollars. Subjective estimates of an individual's overall worth to the organization allow the utility of various organizational interventions to be evaluated. However, this research does little to illuminate the dimensions underlying supervisory judgments of utility. The recent increase in utility research has provided improved methods for estimating the standard deviation of performance in dollars. Subjective estimates of an individual's overall worth to the organization allow the utility of various organizational interventions to be evaluated. However, this research does little to illuminate the dimensions underlying supervisory judgments of utility. The policies underlying judgments of overall worth were captured to a substantial degree, with cross-validated R² values ranging from .46 to .69. A unit weighting scheme was applied to the six predictors, resulting in r² values that exceeded the cross-validated R² derived from regression analyses. This substantial predictability of utility judgments provided the capacity to generalize utility information from a sample of jobs to the population of interest. Analyses comparing validity-based and utility-based clustering schemes explored the degree of convergence between the two approaches to classifying jobs. These analyses indicated that there was some overlap, with validity information being useful in establishing broad categories of jobs associated with similar utility-relevant attributes. At the same time, these analyses demonstrated that the two approaches were not equivalent. Implications of this research are discussed, and several possible directions for future research are noted. It is suggested that such policy capturing procedures can enhance our understanding of judgments of overall worth, and expand the knowledge base upon which organizational decisions are made.
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    Effects of job familiarity and level of analysis on analyst importance ratings of relevant knowledges, skills and abilities
    Donnelly, Laura Ferri (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1983)
    This study was conducted to determine the effects of analyst job familiarity on the accuracy of job analysis information. Differences in job analysis information resulting from differences in the specificity of job information units chosen for analysis were also examined. Students having no prior direct experience with one of three jobs -- secretary, firefighter, or power plant operator -- rated the importance of abilities, both job specific and general, tor successful performance of this job. These three jobs varied in terms of general familiarity associated with them, as determined in a pilot study. ln addition, this study compared the accuracy of secretary ability importance ratings for three groups of students differing in their familiarity with the job of secretary. Test scores on the General Aptitude Test Battery were weighted by both student and expert ability importance weights to determine whether rating differences between the two job analysis sources would influence selection decisions. Accuracy did vary as a function of job familiarity, with secretary ratings being more accurate than firefighter or power plant operator ratings. Importance ratings for specific abilities were more accurate than those for general abilities. The patterns of predicted performance in weighted GATB scores using student and expert weights were quite similar, although there were mean differences between the two weighting strategies. It is suggested that criterion-referenced selection decisions may vary depending on an analyst’s job familiarity, whereas decisions based on norm-referenced measurement would probably not.