Personnel manager knowledge of the characteristics of an effective performance appraisal system is potentially an important factor in appraisal system development. The results of a national sample of municipal personnel professionals indicate that personnelists tend to agree with the performance appraisal literature regarding the essential attributes of an effective appraisal system. A discriminant analysis was performed to identify the characteristics differentiating respondents on their degree of agreement with the appraisal literature. The results demonstrate that personnelists who are less experienced are more likely to support the literature, but the model explained only a small portion of the variance. The most interesting substantive finding is that rater participation in the development of the system is deemed more important than employee participation.
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