Capturing the Policy That Air Force Raters Use When Writing Performance Appraisals on Junior Officers

This study examined the relationship between four dimensions of performance leadership, task performance, interpersonal facilitation, and job dedication and overall performance by junior officers in the Air Force. It was hypothesized that the four dimensions would have different relative importance to overall performance, ratee gender would have no effect on rating policy, and raters with greater experience would show greater rating consistency. Finally, it was hypothesized that the Conscientiousness factor of the International Personality Inventory Protocol and Positive and Negative Affectivity may be correlated with the relative importance of the four dimensions of performance and a rater leniency measure and that significant prediction models could be developed. For the entire sample and a sub sample of Majors-and-above, leadership was the most important dimension. The other dimensions task performance, interpersonal facilitation, and job dedication were equally important, yet less important than leadership. For Captains and below, all dimensions were equally important. There was no significant gender effect on ratings, but there was evidence that experience is positively related to consistency of ratings for Majors and above. Neither Conscientiousness nor Positive and Negative Affectivity could be used to develop a significant prediction model for the importance of behavior dimensions or rater leniency.