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Abstract

Despite its widespread use, little is known regarding the manner in which to implement performance monitoring systems to enhance CRT-based task design and employee productivity. For example, no empirical studies to date have investigated the effects of varied levels of CRT-based performance goals and feedback on data entry performance. Theories of learned helplessness, as well as empirical data, suggest that in cases of very difficult goals and very frequent feedback, performance will be negatively affected.

A 3 (Goal Difficulty) × 3 (Feedback Frequency) completely randomized experiment, with 90 clerical workers serving as test participants, did not support this hypothesis. Instead, the performance of test participants who received the most difficult goals and most frequent feedback showed 25% higher performance scores than the average of the other groups and 12% higher than the next highest performing group. However, the performance of these test participants in the medium-difficulty goal/frequent feedback group was significantly lower than the average of the rest of the groups. Questionnaire data indicated that these test participants perceived the frequent feedback to be significantly more disruptive of their performance. These results are discussed in terms of their implication for the design of CRT-based performance tasks.

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Manipulating Display Feedback Parameters for Enhanced Data Entry Performance

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