Effect of Amount of Job Information Required on Reliability of Incumbents' Check-list Reports
Ernest J. McCormick · PsycEXTRA Dataset · 1960
The purpose of this study was to measure what effect the number of questions asked about each task had upon the consistency and amount of information provided by Air Force personnel when completing task inventories. Aircraft Control and Warning Operators were asked to report, by means of a task checklist, various combinations of the following information: (1) the occurrence of tasks; (2) the frequency with which the task was performed; (3) the time required; (4) the judged mental difficulty of the tasks. Fifty-six airmen were randomly assigned to each of the four experimental groups. Each group was administered one of the four combinations of the four types of information. Analysis of variance showed no systematic differences in the number of tasks reported by incumbents who were asked to report one, two, three, or four types of information about such tasks. Incumbents who were required to report (as opposed to fewer) types of information about their tasks generally provided more reliable information. Among the different samples of incumbents there was considerable stability in the number who reported that they performed a particular task.