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Forced Choice—The New Army Rating 1
Author(s) -
Sisson E. Donald
Publication year - 1948
Publication title -
personnel psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.076
H-Index - 142
eISSN - 1744-6570
pISSN - 0031-5826
DOI - 10.1111/j.1744-6570.1948.tb01316.x
Subject(s) - officer , psychology , minor (academic) , rating scale , social psychology , law , management , operations research , political science , mathematics , economics , developmental psychology
S ummary T he origin of the use of efficiency reports for Officers of the U. S. Army is lost in history, as is the story of the evolution of the formal procedures of reporting. Sometime after the first World War, however, a standard form was adopted and a procedure regularized for accomplishing this report. Thereafter, twice each year—on June 30th and on December 31st—every officer in the Army has been rated by his immediate superior, and this rating submitted to the War Department. Though early recognized as not completely satisfactory, the original rating form remained in force (with sporadic minor amendments) until it was superseded in July of 1947. The new form is the product of many months of concentrated research. It is radically different in many respects from the old form, and from other rating devices currently in use in industry. Its most novel feature is the use of what has been called the “forced‐choice” rating method. Rather than indicating how much or how little of each characteristic an officer possesses, the rater is required to choose, from several sets of four adjectives or phrases, which best characterizes the officer, and which is least descriptive. In other words, it calls for objective reporting and minimizes subjective judgment. And because of the way in which the tetrads—sets of four rating elements—are constructed, it reduces the rater's ability to produce any desired outcome by the choice of obviously good or obviously bad traits. It thus diminishes the effects of favoritism and personal bias. The technique, and the form embodying it, has been tried out on fifty thousand officers—in both experimental and official trials—and the results obtained with it have been compared with independent criteria of efficiency arrived at through group ratings. The new method is superior to all other methods examined. It produces a better distribution of ratings relatively free from the usual pile‐up at the top of the scale. It is less subject to influence by the rank of the officer being rated. It is quickly and objectively scored by machine. And above all, it produces ratings which are more valid indices of real worth. The particular form developed for rating Army officers would probably be of little value for other groups—largely because of the specificity of the rating elements it contains. The technique, however, has already proved of value in other situations and there is every reason to believe that it is even more generally applicable.