A Quantitative Review of Performance Feedback in Organizational Settings (1998-2018)

ABSTRACT

Researchers have extensively studied performance feedback in the past 40 years. In organizational behavior management (OBM), feedback is a popular intervention component that can effectively increase and maintain performance across settings and target behaviors. The purpose of this meta-analysis is to update and extend the previous feedback literature reviews. This meta-analysis includes 96 applied performance feedback applications from 71 articles published in four journals between 1998–2018. We coded each feedback application for application characteristics, feedback characteristics, and rigor of methodology. We evaluated each application’s effectiveness by visual inspection and by calculated effect sizes. We conducted a meta-analysis for feedback overall and per feedback characteristics for all applications and for applications that used rigorous methodology by adhering to the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) standards. The meta-analysis results showed that feedback is an effective intervention, consistently producing large and very large effect sizes. Some feedback characteristics produced larger effect sizes more reliably.

KEYWORDS:

• Performance feedback
• feedback
• meta-analysis
• objective review
• organizations
• what works clearinghouse

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Rachel Tilka and her students for their help in the preparation phase of the review.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.