The Application of the Psychophysical Law to the United States Army Officer Efficiency Reporting System

Statement of the Problem: In rendering the United States Army Officer Efficiency Report, the rater is required to describe in narrative form the performance of the ratee. Too, the rater must express quantitatively his overall evaluation of the performance by placing the ratee in an adjectival, quantitative category. Army regulations declare it is imperative that the rater be consistent in these two portions of the report and that the categorical rating be justified by the narrative description. Clearly some measure of "consistency" or "justification" is needed, yet none is prescribed or even suggested.

Apart from the above two evaluations, the Army rater is required to make a categorical evaluation of the ratee's personal qualities such as ambition, stamina, and dependability. The rater is instructed to evaluate personal qualities and manner of performance separately, not allowing personal qualities to affect the numerical overall demonstrated performance score.

The following hypotheses are to be tested by this thesis: (1) that a power function describes the relationship between observation of performance as narratively described and the overall demonstrated performance score; (2) that this function obtains regardless of whether the overall, quantitative evaluation is a response to observation of actual performance or a response to a written set of performance specimens which describe a hypothetical performance; and, (3) that the degree to which the ratee is deemed by the rater to possess or lack specified personal qualities has an effect on the quantitative overall demonstrated performance score.