Employee Evaluation Report

Abstract

The Employee Evaluation Report (EER), developed by Jurgensen in 1950, is a foundational multi-item rating scale used in organizational psychology. Its primary function is to assess an employee’s overall job success and performance outcomes, designed specifically for completion by supervisors. The development of the EER involved a comparative study to determine its effectiveness relative to traditional rank order merit ratings. Structurally, the scale employs a mixed-method approach, featuring four quantitative Likert-type items alongside two qualitative open-ended questions designed to capture nuanced feedback on strengths and weaknesses. The design emphasizes psychometric rigor by intentionally varying item wording and response categories to mitigate rater bias and ensure item diversity.

Keywords

Employee Evaluation Report, Job Performance, Likert-type items, Performance Appraisal, Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Rating Scale, Reliability, Supervisor Ratings, Merit Ratings

Authors

C. E. Jurgensen

Purpose

The central purpose of the Employee Evaluation Report is to provide a structured, yet flexible, mechanism for supervisors to evaluate the comprehensive success and contribution of an employee within their role. This evaluation aims to move beyond single performance metrics by integrating several perspectives of job performance, including satisfaction with work output and perceived value to the organization.

A secondary, but historically significant, purpose during the scale’s initial development was methodological: to test and compare the utility and psychometric soundness of this multi-item rating system against simpler, often less reliable, methods such as rank order merit ratings prevalent in the 1950s.

Construct

The primary construct measured by the EER is Overall Job Success. This construct is defined broadly, encompassing a supervisor’s subjective assessment of an employee’s value, satisfaction with their performance, and suitability for continued employment. The concept of job success is treated as a multifaceted judgment derived from several distinct rating questions.

Jurgensen ensured the items were constructed carefully to avoid redundancy and promote diversity in measurement. The three key development factors considered during construction were:

• Item Wording: Items were phrased to obscure potential identicalness, minimizing the chance of raters automatically selecting the same category for different questions.
• Rating Categories: The number of rating categories was intentionally varied (4 to 7 points) across the quantitative items to discourage raters from consistently checking a single category, thereby forcing a more nuanced evaluation.
• Open-Ended Questions: The inclusion of two qualitative questions allowed for in-depth feedback, capturing aspects of performance (strengths and weaknesses) that quantitative scales might miss.

Validity

While the original source primarily focused on scale development and reliability, the construction methodology demonstrates an implicit focus on validity, particularly regarding the reduction of common rating errors. The deliberate variation in item wording and the use of heterogeneous rating categories were crucial strategies employed to minimize artificial inflation of correlations and potential halo effects, thereby strengthening the measure’s construct validity.

The initial study served as a form of concurrent validation, as the EER results were compared against established organizational practices, specifically rank order merit ratings. This comparison provided evidence that the EER captured similar underlying variance related to supervisory judgments of performance, offering a more detailed and potentially less biased assessment than simple ranking methods.

Reliability

The reliability and consistency of the Employee Evaluation Report were systematically established by having a sample of supervisors complete the scale for several employees. The statistical analysis of these ratings provided empirical evidence of the measure’s dependability.

The results of this psychometric analysis demonstrated strong findings across multiple measures of internal consistency and stability, including specific demonstrations of item reliability, item consistency, and overall scale reliability. These results confirm that the EER provides stable and dependable measurements of supervisory satisfaction and perceived job success within the domain of Applied Psychology.

Factor Analysis

The original development paper by Jurgensen (1950) did not explicitly detail a formal factor analytic study. However, the scale construction principles—using four quantitatively distinct items intended to avoid redundancy and measure different facets of job success—suggest that the items were designed to contribute uniquely to the assessment of Overall Job Success, likely functioning as a single, higher-order construct representing supervisory sentiment toward the employee.

Instrument

Test Type: Performance Rating Scale; Supervisor Evaluation Instrument

Format: Mixed format consisting of four quantitative items and two qualitative open-ended items.

Language Available: English (Original Publication)

Population Group: Employees (Rated by Supervisors/Managers)

Age Group: Adult working population

Population Details: Developed within an industrial setting for use by supervisors to evaluate subordinates based on job performance.

Test Methodology: Raters respond to the quantitative items using varying Likert-type scales (ranging from 4-point to 7-point response options) to mitigate response bias. The two qualitative items require narrative, open-answer responses focusing on employee strengths and weaknesses.

Keywords

Organizational Behavior, Personnel Selection, Performance Management, Industrial Psychology, Supervisory Ratings, Employee Assessment, Job Performance, Applied Psychology

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Information not available.

Affiliation Email addresses: Information not available.

Correspondence Address: Information not available.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Test Year: 1950

Permissions and Fee: Permissions must be sought from the publisher of the original journal article, the American Psychological Association (APA), as the scale was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Reference’s

Jurgensen, C. E. (1950). Overall job success as a basis for employee ratings. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 34(5), 333-337. DOI: 10.1037/h0054680.

Items of the Employee Evaluation Report

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.