Checklist for 360 degree appraisal questionnaire

Saturday, January 16, 2010 by Brendan Walsh
A 360 degree feedback questionnaire falls out of your competency framework.  Here are our rules of thumb for your questionnaire.
  • Between 20 and 40 questions is about right
  • Usually we see these as groups of 3-5 questions per competency
  • Adding a narrative question for each competency is normally the right way to go.
  • Consider whether every group of people can answer every question. If not, then exclude the questions from that group. So, peers may answer a subset of the overall question set for example (and so reduce the burden upon them).
  • It can be useful to have a question (or even 2 or 3) at the end of the 360 that asks people to give broader feedback or cover points they would like to make
  • Questions should be brief, clear and unambiguous, and describe an observable behaviour
  • If you have people for whom English is not their first language then we would recommend translation of the questions. You probably don't need to translate the whole system but the nuance of questions matters
Questionnaire design can be a technical area - but if you stick to relatively short, clear questions then you can avoid issues that can flow from having complex overlapping questions which ask about more than one behavior.  As ever, simplicity is crucial in 360 degree feedback.

Brendan

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