Behavior Description
Corporate Culture
Correlation
Critical Incident
Cronbach's Alpha
Defensible
Maslachs Burnout Inventory
Mean
Performance Example
Reliability
Skill Description
Standard Deviation (SD)
Utility Theory
Validity
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When we describe human behavior using Behavior Description (BD) we expand the typical definition of behavior to include what the person does and how they do it.
For example, a person described as a hard worker in one environment may not be so regarded in another. The intricacy and therefore the clarity lie in carefully describing the behaviors required for each environment. A hard worker in situation A might "move about quickly," where in situation B, moving quickly is not nearly important as "deciding quickly."
The good new is that all these distinctions have been factored and stored in our database so you do not have to spend the thousands of hours getting clear about them. We've already done it for you.
Learn more about the history of Behavior Description.
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Organizational culture can be affected by environment, management/worker actions and expectations.
We rate culture effectiveness by the degree to which it has the right people doing the right things for the right reasons. Using today's technology, all three can be measured quickly and cost effectively to identify improvement opportunities.
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If there is a relationship between two variables, the value that represents the change in distance between them from moment to moment is called correlation.
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Researchers often like to isolate specific examples or occurrences from general patterns of behavior. They refer to these selected examples as "critical incidents" and use them to more fully investigate certain phenomena.
An example would be a situation where an irate customer demands to speak to the "person in charge." The observer is in a position to note whether or not the behavior of the sales representative was effective and in line with recommended policy. How did they speak to the customer? Did they remain calm? Did they show concern? Did they listen long enough to determine what the problem was? Less-effective behavior in this situation might include engaging in an argument or avoiding the customer completely until the manager intervened.
The incident has research value because it can be examined for its behavioral content. Those behaviors can be matched against an inventory of behavior that has been shown to correlate with certain results.
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Cronbach's Alpha measures how well a set of items (or variables) measures a single one-dimensional latent construct. When data have a multidimensional structure, Cronbach's Alpha will usually be low. Technically speaking, Cronbach's Alpha is not a statistical test -- it is a co-efficient of reliability (or consistency).
Cronbach's Alpha can be written as a function of the number of test items and the average inter-correlation among the items:
 
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Will it hold up in court, is it legal?
Most strategies have four concerns:
- Validity (Will it work?),
- Defensibility (Is it legal? Can we get away with it?),
- Cost Effectiveness (Does it make sense financially?), and;
- Practicality (Does it fit with our culture and/or current best practices?)
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Christina Maslach, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, is the creator of the Maslach Burnout Inventory, a widely used research measure to discern how employees experience their work. Her recent book, The Truth About Burnout: How Organizations Cause Stress and What to Do About It, co-authored with Michael P. Leiter, explores how companies create stressful work environments for employees and what steps victims can take to remedy their situations.
The inventory measures burnout in three areas: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a reduced sense of personal accomplishment.
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When researchers examine data they often look for tendencies. One such tendency is for the data to centralize in patterns that can be described. Statisticians use three calculations to measure and report this tendency (mode, median and mean). When the central tendency pattern is symmetrical, the "mean" is the most appropriate measure. Although it is the most complicated calculation of the three, it is also the most stable and reliable way to infer other values.
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According to research, the most accurate way to assess a person's performance is to examine specific examples of past performance in relevant situations. When asked a question regarding their behavior in a certain type of situation, an applicant should provide a specific Performance Example of what they did and how they did it.
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Reliability is the measure of relationship between the actual score and the observed score. The closer the observed score is to the actual score, the higher the reliability.
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Often job descriptions include lists of the Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSAs) the high-performing incumbent will have. Skills are best described when they include specific output requirements, level of competency required, and a behavior description of how and how not to do it.
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A measure of variability in a population. If the population is normally distributed, the mean 2 SDs include 95% of the population.
Note: it is not affected by the sample size.
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A complicated arithmetic calculation to determine the value of a particular strategy. How much value or utility can we expect from this particular strategy?
There are typically two ways to estimate future value or utility.
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In a gamble in which there is a p% chance of winning $X, the expected value(EV) is equal to pX. If there is a p% chance of X and a q% chance of Y, then EV=pX+qY. The Expected Value theory says you should always choose the option with the highest expected value.
The problem with the Expected Value theory is that it conflicts with people's intuitions. Researchers attribute this discrepancy to a flaw in the theory.
If you were given the option of either winning $1 million or taking a 50% chance of winning $3 million, the EV theory says you should prefer the latter option. Many people, however, would choose the first option because the $1 million is a sure thing and the second option is a gamble.
It's true that people don't always go for the "sure thing." For instance, if you had the option of taking a 99% chance of winning $1 million or taking $1, most people would choose the first option.
Let's look at a third example. If given a choice between taking a 95% chance of winning $1 million and a 50% chance of winning $3 million, most people would choose the first option, although both are gambles. Winning $3 million is not really three times as desirable a consequence as $1 million. This answer can be predicted using the Expected Utility theory.
Most researchers would say that the satisfaction we'd get from $3 million isn't that much greater than the satisfaction we'd get from $1 million. Suppose we constructed a utility scale by which we try to quantify the amount of derived satisfaction or utility, where 0 corresponds to winning nothing and 100 corresponds to winning $3 million. What number would correspond to winning $1 million? If you said 80, then the difference between what you have now and winning $1 million is four times as great as the difference between winning $1 million and winning $3 million. The numbers on this scale are referred to as utiles.
A formula similar to that of expected value is used to calculate expected utility. Instead of multiplying probabilities and dollar amounts, you multiply probabilities and utility amounts. That is, the expected utility (EU) of a gamble equals the probability of winning multiplied by the amount of utiles. Expected utility theory says if you rate $1 million as 80 utiles and $3 million as 100 utiles, you ought to choose the first option.
EU theory captures the very important concept that the value of an additional dollar decreases as total wealth increases. The change in your life when you go from $0 to $1 million is larger than the change in your life when you go from $1 million to $2 million.
In summary, EV theory stipulates that the correct choice is the same for all people. In EU theory, what is right for one person is not necessarily right for another person.
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A statistical measurement of whether or not something works. For example, if you could see the breath of the person standing outside your office window, it would be a fairly valid way to determine whether or not it was cold or warm outside.
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