Monday, October 22, 2007

Effective Performance Assessment the IPA Way

There is more to performance assessment than simple personal ratings or third-person ratings. True objective assessment should come from multiple sources. Based on the 360 degree feedback concept, Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA) goes far beyond individual and third-person ratings. IPA is a holistic measurement process designed to assess all areas of a person's skill capabilities. The information obtained from this type of measurement goes a long way toward helping a person make improvements wherever there are blind spots in his or her performance.

The IPA Research Methodology provides a theoretical assessment framework that practitioners can use to obtained three types of measures when assessing individual performance. These three measures include perceived, assessed, and demonstrated performance. Perceived performance generally comes from individual or third-person assessments. Assessed performance comes from norm-referenced or criterion-referenced assessments. Demonstrated performance can come from on-the-job observations and other types of performance assessment methods conducted by managers, peers, or other informed individuals depending on the type of work environment in which the assessment is being taken.

Alone each of these methods (perceived, assessed, and demonstrated performance) can mitigate the effectiveness and efficacy of performance measurements because each method has its own set of strengths and weaknesses that can create blind spots in a person's performance. This results in inflated or deflated perceptions of a person's true skill capability. To overcome this problem an integrated approach to individual performance assessment is far more advantageous.

A dissertation research study was proposed and started to fulfill degree requirements for a Doctorate in Educational Leadership to address the tenets outline in the IPA Research Methodology. To learn more read the dissertation proposal.

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