Job analysis a guide to assessing work activities
Gael, Sidney
A step-by-step practitioner's guide to conducting job analysis through the job inventory (task inventory) approach, centered on the computer-aided Work Performance Survey System (WPSS) developed at AT&T.
Job Analysis: A Guide to Assessing Work Activities is a comprehensive, hands-on manual for anyone who needs to understand and document exactly what tasks are performed in specific jobs and how workers perform them. Drawing on decades of U.S. Air Force research and AT&T's development of the Work Performance Survey System (WPSS), Sidney Gael walks the reader through the entire lifecycle of a job analysis project: planning and managing the effort, deriving accurate task statements, writing well-structured questionnaires, interviewing incumbents and supervisors, distributing and collecting surveys, computerizing and analyzing the data, and interpreting the results to support training, selection, job design, and job evaluation. Assuming no prior experience, the book provides concrete guidelines, examples, and even a complete computer user manual, plus a shortcut version for small organizations. It is the rare 'how-to' text in a field where procedural guidance is scarce, enabling readers to produce objective, accurate, and complete information about a job or set of jobs with minimal reliance on consultants.
The model it argues
A causal-framework model expressing how job analysis design levers (task statement quality, questionnaire design, technique mix, sampling adequacy) drive respondent behavioral and psychological states (response accuracy, comprehension) which in turn produce data quality outcomes (reliability, validity) and ultimately job information utility supporting downstream HR programs. Includes computer analysis as an enabling condition.
Key ideas
- Task Statement Quality
- The extent to which written task statements conform to the standard grammatical and structural conventions and guidelines that make them accurate, specific, consistent, non-overlapping, understandable, and compatible with rating scales.
- Questionnaire Design Quality
- The overall clarity, appropriateness, organization, and self-administrability of the WPSS questionnaire, including its task attribute questions, response scales, directions, personal information items, and data-reduction-friendly layout.
- Job Information Technique Mix
- The composite application of content analysis of job documents, observation of incumbents at work, and interviews with incumbents and supervisors used to derive and verify task statements.
- Sampling Adequacy
- The degree to which the respondent sample size and site selection represent the range of work activities and operational conditions, permitting accurate inference from sample statistics to the incumbent population.
- Respondent Comprehension
- The extent to which respondents understand the task statements, response scales, and completion directions well enough to answer appropriately with little or no assistance.
- Task Response Accuracy
- The fidelity with which respondents' task attribute ratings reflect the actual work performed, including truthful reporting of task occurrence.
- Job Inventory Data Reliability
- The stability and consistency of job inventory data across administrations, raters, or consolidated samples for a given task attribute.
- Job Inventory Data Validity
- The degree to which task data correspond with reality or actual task involvement in the job.