be easiest for managers to use in setting goals for change because they are the most concrete. Behavioral changes are the easiest for co-workers to see as well. Change on this type item, however, can be the most superficial in terms of enhancing personal development. At the other extreme, feedback on characteristics such as motivation can be the most difficult to use, and change on this type item can be the hardest to observe. But change on these items may be more likely to enhance personal development. Feedback on specific skills probably falls somewhere between these two extremes: It is moderately easy to use when changes are observable and it involves some real skill development.
The items discussed above are good examples. If one receives a low score on a behavioral item such as “Walks around to see how our work is going,” it will be relatively easy to change (that is, “Walk around more”) but will probably lead to little in the way of personal development for that manager. If one receives a low score on a skill-based item such as “Is good at influencing the right people,” it will be harder to change, because the manager will have to find out how to become better and then will need to improve. But the result can be important skill development. Finally, receiving a low score on an item such as “Is highly motivated” can be the hardest of all to change. Change will require the manager to reflect and discover why motivation is low, and to decide what it will take to feel more motivated. Then the manager will have to make whatever personal or life changes are necessary. This kind of change, however, can be the more developmental.
If individuals are left on their own to process feedback (no trainer or facilitator is available), or if an instrument is not accompanied by comprehensive interpretive and development materials, the clarity of item content is critical. The harder items are to interpret, the more difficulty managers will have in benefiting from the feedback and the more important the quantity and quality of support becomes.
Once items are created, instrument development proceeds to the task of constructing the scales on which feedback will be given. Multiple items are grouped together to represent the set of closely related skills or behaviors that make up a managerial competency (for instance, “Resourcefulness” or “Planning and Organizing”). Responses to the items on a scale should group together to form a coherent whole, internally homogeneous and distinct from other scales.
How the scale-development process is conducted is critical, because the resulting scales will form the basis of the model of leadership, management, or effective performance that you will be presenting to the manager. Your task as the evaluator is to discover whether the process of scale construction seems reasonable and complete. To determine that, you will need to look in the technical manual or in published technical reports.
There are typically two aspects of scale development: the statistical and the rational/intuitive. The statistical aspect involves using procedures such as factor analysis, cluster analysis, or item-scale correlations to group items into scales based on the degree of similarity in response patterns of the raters (for instance, people rated high on one item are also rated high on other items in that scale). The rational/intuitive aspect involves grouping items together based on the author’s expectations or experience about how different skills or behaviors relate to one another. Some instruments have used one of the two processes in developing scales from items and some have used both.
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