方法对比

	Critical Incident Technique	Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales
领域	组织行为学	组织行为学
方法族	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
起源年份	1954	1963
提出者	John C. Flanagan	Patricia Cain Smith & L. M. Kendall
类型	Qualitative behavior-elicitation and classification procedure	Behaviorally anchored performance-rating scale construction
开创性文献	Flanagan, J. C. (1954). The critical incident technique. Psychological Bulletin, 51(4), 327-358.	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.
别名	CIT, Flanagan Critical Incident Technique, Critical Incidents Method, Critical Incident Analysis	BARS, Behavioral Expectation Scales, Smith-Kendall Scales, Behaviorally Anchored Scales
相关	3	3
摘要	The critical incident technique (CIT) is a qualitative procedure for studying human behavior by collecting and classifying detailed accounts of specific incidents in which behavior was especially effective or ineffective in achieving an aim. John Flanagan introduced it in his landmark 1954 Psychological Bulletin article, drawing on his work selecting and classifying aircrew in World War II, where vague trait descriptions had proved useless and concrete behavioral accounts proved decisive. Rather than asking people for opinions or generalities, CIT asks observers to recount what actually happened, what the person did, and why it mattered, then builds a framework of behavioral requirements inductively from those accounts. The technique gave applied psychology a rigorous, replicable way to derive job requirements, performance criteria, and training content from real behavior. It remains a foundational method underlying job analysis, behaviorally anchored rating scales, and competency modeling. Its hallmark is grounding abstract requirements in observable, situated action.	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.