Development of an Equation for Evaluating Job Difficulty,
Abstract
A report is given of the first in a series of studies designed to produce a method for evaluating the difficulty levels of Air Force enlisted jobs. In the study, 250 job descriptions in the Medical Materiel Career Ladder were ranked on difficulty by supervising personnel using a complex partitioning system. Computation of interrater agreement for these rankings yielded an r of .93. Twenty-one variables were defined which might have entered into the judgments made by supervisors, and regression analyses subsequently identified three variables which predicted the job difficulty rankings with an R of .95. These three predictor variables were number of tasks performed, difficulty of tasks performed per unit time, and number of tasks performed, squared. Application of a shrinkage correction formula to test for chance errors resulted in a negligible correction to the obtained R. Developing weights for the three predictor variables in separate samples and cross-applying to predict the difficulty level of jobs in the opposite group yielded an R of .94 in both cross-applications. Comparisons of the rank order positions of the criterion jobs using predicted and rated difficulty values revealed nonsignificant differences. Results of the study indicate that the difficulty level of jobs within the Medical Materiel Career Ladder can be adequately determined using the derived three-variable regression equation. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 1970
- Accession Number
- AD0720253
Entities
People
- Donald F. Mead