Objective and self‐report work performance measures: a comparative analysis

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the feasibility and comparability of daily self‐report and objective measures of work performance in complex office tasks, and factors affecting the correlation between these measures. Design/methodology/approach – Medical bill auditors provided daily information for 12 weeks through interactive voice response (IVR) on their speed, concentration and accuracy at work, compared to their best job performance. Findings – The paper found that 124 of 142 recruited subjects (87 percent) completed > 50 percent of daily IVR reports. Concentration, speed and accuracy were highly inter‐correlated ( R =0.75), and right‐skewed (mean speed=7.7, SD=1.5). Mean adjusted daily productivity rate (MAP) was 34 bills/hour (range 4.7 to 111, SD12.6, 61 percent within‐person variation). Subject‐specific speed – MAP correlation varied from R =−0.20 to +0.75 (mean, 0.28). Health status, years on job, age, IVR completion rate, site, month of study, or total hours worked were not associated with these variations. Originality/value – This paper provides an unprecedented level of detail in the comparison of self‐reported and objective daily measures of work performance, demonstrates the feasibility of data collection and analysis, and identified significant inconsistencies among workers in the correlation between the two types of measures. Results demonstrated that daily self‐reports cannot be used as a direct surrogate for objective performance measures.