Task Clarification and Individual Performance Posting for Improving Cleaning in a Student-Managed University Bar

Abstract

A modified multiple baseline design across groups was employed to evaluate the effects of task clarification and individual performance posting procedures on low-probability cleaning behaviors for persons who worked in a wholly student-managed university bar. Products of cleaning behaviors were defined in terms of behavioral checklists, and were assessed by student managers who were reliably trained. Task clarification, introduced simultaneously to all groups, resulted in an abrupt 13% increase in checkmarks (maintained thereafter over a 5-week period) over those earned during the baseline level of performance. Introduction of performance posting for the first group produced an additional 37% increase in checkmarks that were reliably greater (ps < .05) than for the other two. Nonetheless, an apparent generalization of this posting effect (23% mean increase) occurred concomitantly for the subjects of two unposted groups. Increases in checkmarks to levels that were comparable to that of Group 1 occurred thereafter upon the respective, temporally-staggered introductions of performance posting for the two remaining groups (ps < .05). Task clarification and generalization effects respectively are discussed as possible instructional and motivational components of an organization-wide feedback intervention.