The Relationship Between the Number of Raters and the Validity of Performance Ratings

Matt C. Howard

Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2016, vol. 9, issue 2, 361-367

Abstract: In the focal article “Getting Rid of Performance Ratings: Genius or Folly? A Debate,” two groups of authors argued the merits of performance ratings (Adler et al., 2016). Despite varied views, both sides noted the importance of including multiple raters to obtain more accurate performance ratings. As the pro side noted, “if ratings can be pooled across many similarly situated raters, it should be possible to obtain quite reliable assessments” (Adler et al., p. 236). Even the con side noted, “In theory, it is possible to obtain ratings from multiple raters and pool them to eliminate some types of interrater agreement” (Adler et al., p. 225), although this side was certainly less optimistic about the merits of multiple raters. In the broader industrial–organizational psychology literature, authors have repeatedly heralded the benefits of adding additional raters for performance ratings, some even treating it as a panacea for inaccurate ratings. Although these authors extol the virtues of multiple raters, an important question is often omitted from relevant discussions of performance ratings: To what extent do additional raters actually improve performance ratings? Does adding an additional rater double the validity of performance ratings? Does an additional rater increase the validity of performance ratings by a constant value? Or is the answer something else altogether?

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:inorps:v:9:y:2016:i:02:p:361-367_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().