Relative and absolute self‐ratings of work performance: Does social comparison lead to an enhanced thought process in self‐evaluations?

Abstract

Employee self-ratings are often a required and important part of performancemanagement programs. We asked self-raters to provide in-depth descriptions of their thought processes when rating their own work performance using either a relative (i.e., comparative, percentile-based) or a conventional absolute rating process. Thematic analysis indicated that relative self-ratings typically engendered a two-step evaluation process: initial consideration of one's performance, then comparison to a reference group. Conventional absolute self-ratings tended to rely on a single-step, less comprehensive process. Relative self-rating mean scores were significantly lower than were absolute self-ratings. Our results provide further insights into the mechanism that may underlie relative ratings' psychometric advantages as previously found in a variety of domains.

The chemistry between us: Illuminating complementarity patterns in interpersonal role-play assessment via moment-to-moment analyses.

“…To obtain criterion data, we relied on the relative percentile method (Carver et al, 2021;Goffin et al, 1996Goffin et al, , 2009. In this method, a rater is asked to compare the performance of an individual to a reference group.…”