Design and Fleet Trial of Automated Performance Evaluation Forms for Two Pay Grade Groups: E5-E6 and E1-E4

Alternative marking scales and coding procedures for each pay grade group were experimentally administered to a fleet sample, finding the inflationary and stultifying effect of the present coding procedure, even on the new forms.

Abstract

The traditional method of acquiring on-job performance evaluation marks for enlisted personnel is deficient in two important respects: (1) the scales do not adequately differentiate among actual levels of ratee performance, and (2) the manual forms and procedures do not per-mit timely processing and application of the data for important indi-vidual personnel actions (e.g., advancement, assignment, and quality retention). In 1968 the Navy began its transition from a manual to an auto-mated system, starting with the development and implementation of an Optical Mark Reader (OMR) document for the top three enlisted Pay Grades, E-7/8/9. This report describes the development of new marking scales for two other Pay Grade groups, 5-6 and 1-4. Although automated processing equipment was used, the primary thrust of the project was on substantive, rather than hardware, considerations. The purpose was to reduce inflation of marks and to achieve greater differentiation of levels of performance among ratees by designing new formats tailored to the specific pay grade groups. B. Approach Alternative marking scales and coding procedures for each pay grade group were experimentally administered to a fleet sample. Two alter-native Optical Character Reader (OCR) forms, a mark-sense and a character-sense mode, were used to test the automated capability.