Promoting Favorable Attitudes Toward Personnel Surveys: The Role of Follow-Up

Abstract

Periodic command climate assessments and other such surveys are typical in most military organizations. In today's era of dwindling response rates, empirical guidance is needed for leaders and practitioners attempting to understand the factors that affect personnel's attitudes toward surveys and their intentions to complete recurrent questionnaires. The present study addressed this problem by assessing 236 military and civilian workers' reactions to a recurring command climate survey. As hypothesized, personnel who witnessed data feedback, problem identification, and survey-based action after the administration of the survey were particularly inclined to deem the survey useful. Moreover, personnel considered action more important than feedback when evaluating the survey's utility. By shaping perceptions of survey usefulness, awareness of follow-up actions impacted intentions to complete future questionnaires. Overall, the results of this study document the importance of visible, post-survey actions and highlight the repercussions of failing to adequately communicate survey-based change initiatives to the workforce.In recent years, technology has eased the administrative aspects of surveying considerably. Meanwhile, personnel surveys are becoming increasingly popular components of organization and human resource development/change efforts (Church & Waclawski, 1998). Unfortunately, these trends are accompanied by the conten-

Exploring qualitative training reactions: Individual and contextual influences on trainee commenting.

“…If there is an expectation that the training will not or cannot be modified or improved (e.g., instructor's performance), there may be no motivation to provide input. Given evidence suggesting that receiving survey feedback and observing actions resulting from a survey influence future survey responses (Thompson & Surface, 2009), our findings regarding entity beliefs should be further explored to investigate the interplay of participating in evaluation resulting in programmatic change, implicit beliefs, and commenting.…”

Genetic underpinnings of survey response

“…It is possible that genetics predispose people to particular attitudes, cognitions, and affective states that inhibit survey response. Potential attitudinal mediators include attitudes toward surveys in general (Rogelberg et al, 2006), attitudes toward the survey sponsor (Rogelberg et al, 2003), and trust that the survey sponsor will act on the data provided (Thompson & Surface, 2007, 2008). Another possibility involves perceptions of oversurveying.…”

The field of Industrial and Organizational Psychology: An early example of translational research

“…A comprehensive and diverse line of research is devoted to the process of organizational change, including planning, implementation, evaluation, and managing resistance (e.g., Armenakis & Harris, 2002;Armenakis, Bernerth, Pitts, & Jack Walker, 2007;Armenakis, Harris, et al, 2007;Armenakis & Harris, 2009;Austin & Bartunek, 2013;Born & Mathieu, 1996;Ford, Ford, & D'Amelio, 2008;Martins, 2011;Nielsen & Randall, 2012, Nielsen & Simonsen Abildgaard, 2013Nielsen, Simonsen Abildgaard, & Daniels, 2014;Thompson & Surface, 2009) . For those organizations contemplating change, drawing upon this research, and using it to inform planning and implementation, is highly recommended.…”