Pay Attention! The Liabilities of Respondent Experience and Carelessness When Making Job Analysis Judgments

Abstract

Job analysis has a central role in virtually every aspect of HR and is one of several high performance work practices thought to underlie firm performance. Given its ubiquity and importance, it is not surprising that considerable effort has been devoted to developing comprehensive job analysis systems and methodologies. Yet, the complexity inherent in collecting detailed and specific "decomposed" information has led some to pursue "holistic" strategies designed to focus on more general and abstract job analysis information. It is not clear, however, if these two different strategies yield comparable information, nor if respondents are equally capable of generating equivalent information. Drawing from cognitive psychology research, we suggest that experienced and careless job analysis respondents are less likely to evidence convergence in their decomposed and holistic job analysis judgments. In a field sample of professional managers, we found that three different types of task-related work experience moderated the relationship between decomposed and holistic ratings, accounting for an average ΔR 2 of 4.7%. Three other more general types of work experience, however, did not moderate this relationship, supporting predictions that only experience directly related to work tasks would prove to be a liability when making judgments. We also found that respondent carelessness moderated the relationship

Are Consensus Ratings of Functional Job Analysis Scales More Reliable than Ratings Made by Independent Raters?

“…The bad news is that based on the available research, only one method of job analysis presently available-FJA-meets the stringent conditions needed to produce such high reliability and consistency for single-rater, task-based ratings. We echo Landy and Farr's (1980)-among several others-call for greater emphasis on theoretically grounded work analysis research (e.g., Morgeson & Campion, 1997;Morgeson, Spitzmuller, Garza, & Campion, 2016). We believe that a sustained effort in theory development and the rigorous control of the job language would improve the reliability, validity, and utility of job and work analysis research and practice.…”

Response invalidity in empirical research: Causes, detection, and remedies

“…Because these methods are unobtrusive, they do not rely on whether respondents are willing and able to describe the effort they expended while completing a survey (Abbey and Meloy, ; Curran, ; DeSimone et al, ; Huang et al, ; Meade and Craig, ). Similarly, to verify whether response invalidity is due to lack of attention (Abbey and Meloy, ; Morgeson et al, ), eye‐tracking procedures (Duchowski, ; Galesic et al, ) could be used to assess the frequency and duration of respondent attention to items and responses options, an approach that is feasible when surveys are completed using computer‐based technologies. These suggestions are based on the premise that the reasons for inadequate responding correspond to latent variables that are not directly observed by the researcher, and like any latent variables, multiple indicators that rely on different methods are needed to tap into the processes involved.…”

The meanings of the unlicensed assistive personnel role in nursing homes: A triadic job analysis perspective

“…The rich findings as well as the managerial recommendations stress in our view one of the basic tenets of HR management in long‐term‐care settings: job analysis and resulting job descriptions rely on information retrieved from incumbents’ clients and, at times, supervisors (Cascio & Aguinis, ). Job analysis—i.e., the systematic process of examining work activities, worker attributes and work context (Sackett & Laczo, )—has a central role in virtually every aspect of HR management (Morgeson, Spitzmuller, Garza, & Campion, ). Job Analyses form the basis for ranking professions within organisations, set criteria for recruitment and selection, training systems, assessment of work‐related outcomes, development and promotion (Cascio, ).…”