Compare methods

	360-Degree Feedback	Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales
Field	Organizational Behavior	Organizational Behavior
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1995	1963
Originator	Manuel London & James Smither; Richard Lepsinger & Anntoinette Lucia	Patricia Cain Smith & L. M. Kendall
Type	Multisource performance-feedback measurement and development process	Behaviorally anchored performance-rating scale construction
Seminal source	Lepsinger, R., & Lucia, A. D. (1997). The Art and Science of 360 Degree Feedback. Pfeiffer. ISBN: 9780787909581	Smith, P. C., & Kendall, L. M. (1963). Retranslation of expectations: An approach to the construction of unambiguous anchors for rating scales. Journal of Applied Psychology, 47(2), 149-155.
Aliases	Multisource Feedback, MSF, Multi-Rater Feedback, 360 Feedback	BARS, Behavioral Expectation Scales, Smith-Kendall Scales, Behaviorally Anchored Scales
Related	3	3
Summary	360-degree feedback, also called multisource feedback, gathers ratings of a focal person's work behavior from the full circle of people around them, self, supervisor, peers, and direct reports, and sometimes customers, rather than from a single boss. The aim is to give a more complete, less biased picture of performance and, especially, to prompt self-awareness and development by revealing how different observers see the same person. Manuel London and James Smither's 1995 article gave the practice a theoretical foundation, explaining when and why multisource feedback might change self-evaluations, goals, and behavior. Richard Lepsinger and Anntoinette Lucia's 1997 practitioner book laid out how to design and implement sound 360 systems. Conway and Huffcutt's 1997 meta-analysis documented the psychometric reality that different sources agree only modestly, which is precisely what makes multiple perspectives informative. 360-degree feedback became one of the most widely adopted leadership-development tools in organizations.	Behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS) are performance-appraisal instruments whose scale points are defined by concrete examples of job behavior rather than by vague adjectives like 'good' or 'excellent.' Patricia Cain Smith and L. M. Kendall introduced the method in 1963 with their technique of retranslation of expectations, a procedure for constructing unambiguous behavioral anchors. The core problem they tackled is that ordinary rating scales leave raters to guess what each numerical point means, so that one supervisor's 4 is another's 2, fatally undermining reliability and fairness. BARS solves this by attaching specific behavioral descriptions, drawn from critical incidents and vetted by independent expert judges, to each level of each performance dimension. The construction process is deliberately participatory and quantitative, which both improves measurement and builds rater understanding. BARS became one of the most influential and widely studied formats in performance appraisal.