A comparison of holistic and decomposed judgment strategies in job analyses by job incumbents

Abstract

Compared 3 alternative judgment strategies used to aid job incumbents in making overall evaluations of worker requirements and motivational characteristics of their own jobs. 115 incumbents across several organizations evaluated their jobs using 13 job analysis scales (e.g., Job Diagnostic Survey) on 2 occasions. Results indicate that a "decomposed" judgment strategy, using a mechanical algorithm to determine the overall evaluations, resulted in improved data from Ss as measured by interrater agreement coefficients. Simple overall clinical, or holistic, judgments proved as effective as the fully decomposed judgments when assessing intrarater reliability across time and when comparing S ratings to job analyst and job supervisor ratings. In all instances, a judgment strategy that involved decomposed estimates followed by holistic overall evaluations proved to be the least effective approach to developing summary evaluations by Ss. (27 ref) (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)