Estimating the Dollar Value Contribution of Human Resource Intervention Programs: Some Comments on the Brogden Utility Equation

This paper addresses the issue of interpreting dollar value utility estimates using the Brogden utility equation. It shows that estimates of the standard deviation of job perfor Mance in dollars (SDy) must be compatible with the effect size measure in order to produce meaningful final utility estimates. With this interpretation of the utility estimates, it is argued that most existing SDy estimation methods would not produce accurate utility estimates of future cash flow.