Which of the following jobs would be most suitable for the direct observation method of job analysis data collection?

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What are the three main categories used in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles to rate, classify, and compare different jobs?
A) reasoning, language, mathematics
B) skills, communication, education
C) tending, serving, data
D) data, people, things
E) people, skills, reasoning

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Which of the following jobs would be most suitable for the direct observation method of job analysis data collection?

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Direct Observation of incumbents performing their jobs enables the trained job analyst to obtain first-hand knowledge and information about the job being analyzed.The Observation method of Job Analysis is suited for jobs in which the work behaviors are 1) observable involving some degree of movement on the part of the incumbent, or 2) job tasks are short in duration allowing for many observations to be made in a short period of time or a significant part of the job can be observed in a short period of time, or 3) jobs in which the job analyst can learn information about the job through observation.Jobs in which the Observation method is successful include:

Table of Contents

  • Why is job analysis important?
  • Common job analysis methods
  • Direct observation
  • Work method analysis
  • Critical incident technique
  • Questionnaire
  • Internal and external research
  • How to perform a job analysis
  • 1. Determine the goal
  • 2. Consider which jobs you want to analyze
  • 3. Select the right job analysis method
  • 4. Create a timeline
  • 5. Prepare your materials
  • 6. Complete the analysis
  • 7. Review your job analysis results
  • 8. Use the data
  • Methods of Job Analysis:
  • Process Methods of Job Analysis:

  • Machine Operator/Adjuster
  • Construction Worker
  • Police Officer/Patrol Officer
  • Flight Attendant
  • Bus Driver
  • Housekeeper/Janitor
  • Skilled Crafts Worker


AdvantagesWith direct Observation, the trained job analyst can obtain first-hand knowledge and information about the job being analyzed. Other Job Analysis methods (such as the interview or questionnaire) only allow the job analyst to indirectly obtain this information. Thus, with other methods of Job Analysis, sources of error (ommissions or exaggerations) are introduced either by the incumbent being interviewed or by items on the questionnaire. With direct observation of the incumbent, these sources of error are eliminated.Direct Observation allows the job analyst to see (and in some cases experience) the work environment, tools and equipment used, interrelationships with other workers, and complexity of the job.Direct Observation of incumbents may be necessary to support testimony if the incumbent or applicant for the job has sued the employer. A Job Analysis is necessary to support personnel actions that were taken. However, the job analysis may be of limited value if the job analyst has not seen the incumbent perform the job. In other words, relying solely on the incumbent's description of their job may not withstand scrutiny in a court of law.

Testimony about jobs personally done is direct testimony and not subject to hearsay rules.


DisadvantagesOne problem with the direct Observation method of Job Analysis is that the presence of an observer may affect the incumbent causing the incumbent to alter their normal work behavior. It is important for the analyst to be unobtrusive in their observations. Incumbents may alter their work behavior if they know they are being observed.

This method is not appropriate for jobs that involve significant amounts of time spent in concentration or mental effort.

Determining the fundamental requirements of the jobs at your business can help you hire the right people, establish competitive pay ranges, develop standards to measure employee performance and make sure your business is running as efficiently as possible. This process of defining jobs is commonly known as job analysis.
 

Not only is the job analysis process an important pre-employment step, but it’s also important to routinely conduct an analysis of the roles that are already filled at your company to make sure you’re offering the right professional development opportunities and setting employees up for success.
 

Below, learn what job analysis is, why it’s important for your business and a few common job analysis methods to try.

Job analysis is the practice of gathering and analyzing details about a particular job, such as the required responsibilities, day-to-day duties, hard and soft skills, qualifications, education, expected outcomes, interaction required (both internal and external), performance standards, working conditions, required physical abilities and nature of supervision. One of the most common ways to use the results of a job analysis is for your job descriptions, but the data can also be used in several other ways.
 

Conducting a job analysis provides an overview of the most important requirements of a role to ensure you’re making the right hiring decisions and helping your current employees succeed. For example, if you don’t conduct a job analysis before making a hire, you might discover that your new employee lacks certain skills that are essential to the success of a role. Failing to conduct an in-depth job analysis can also lead to employee discontent, high turnover rates and low engagement if you frequently hire the wrong person or promote team members who aren’t a great fit for their new role.
 

Additionally, an effective job analysis process ensures that employees understand the expectations of their position, are appropriately trained and receive fair compensation.
 

Why is job analysis important?

A job analysis is a great tool to help you make a variety of personnel decisions and understand the context of a role within an organization. Businesses often use job analysis for:
 

When you collect and analyze the right data during a job analysis, you can also better determine important job elements like:
 

  • Job title
  • Job levels (e.g., assistant, associate, specialist, senior)
  • Position summary
  • Specific job duties
  • Work conditions
  • Potential position/workplace hazards
  • Necessary machinery, equipment and tools
  • How the role fits in with your budget

Common job analysis methods

There are several different ways to perform job analysis. The job analysis method you choose depends on the goals of the job analysis, your industry, the job’s work environment and the specifics of the position. Here are five of the most common job analysis methods:

Direct observation

Direct observation requires you to observe an employee in the position while they perform their daily job duties. Take detailed notes on what the employee does, the materials they use, necessary skills and any other job-related requirements.
 

The direct observation method typically requires the analyst to be familiar with the job, so they know what to look for and how to describe it appropriately. A department manager or senior employee is best suited to perform this method of job analysis.

Work method analysis

Consider using the work method job analysis for repetitive labor jobs, like assembly line positions. This job analysis includes time and motion studies that determine precisely how long it takes to complete an action and how many actions the employee can complete during their shift. Companies often estimate this information to determine how many workers they need to meet production goals.

Critical incident technique

The critical incident job analysis technique’s goal is determining what separates good work performance from poor work performance. Using this method, analysts interview employees about critical incidents they’ve experienced on the job, which they assess to determine what specific skills were required to reach a positive outcome.

Interview

In the interview job analysis method, you interview employees and their supervisors about the specifics of the employee’s job. Interviewers often ask a variety of questions to determine what duties the job requires and what skills are necessary to complete the job effectively.
 

Questions might include:
 

  • Describe the job you do in your own words.
  • What is your job’s overall purpose?
  • Describe your working conditions.
  • What do you feel is necessary in terms of education or qualifications to perform your job successfully?
  • What special tools, equipment or machines do you use on a daily basis?
  • What is the level of accountability in your role?
  • How long do you typically spend on X task?

Questionnaire

The questionnaire job analysis method requires employees to answer a list of questions related to their job. Often, these questionnaires are very detailed to glean as much information and specificity about the position as possible. Many questionnaires to help you conduct job analysis exist, with the most common including:
 

  • Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ): Developed at Purdue University in 1972, the PAQ is used to define the duties and responsibilities of a given job position. It covers mental processes, work output, relationships with other people, job context, and job characteristics, among other factors.
  • Functional Job Analysis (FJA): The FJA was created by the Employment and Training Administration of the United States Department of Labor to perform qualitative analysis of a job. It describes what an employee does, broken down into functions like data, worker instructions, reasoning, people, math and language.
  • Multipurpose Occupational Systems Analysis Inventory – Close-Ended (MOSAIC): MOSAIC is a survey-based job analysis tool that collects information from employees to determine the core competencies of a role (e.g., knowledge, skills, abilities).
  • Common Metric Questionnaire (CMQ): The CMQ is a 62-question survey that covers five core sections: background, contacts with people, physical and mechanical activities, decision making and work setting.

Internal and external research

Use a variety of sources to gather information on a particular job position. Start by looking internally. For example, look at your existing job postings, performance development plans and employee training materials. You can also perform external research by looking at job description samples or job postings online for the role you’re analyzing and see what other companies are looking for in candidates.
 

Check out our job description samples for hundreds of different roles.
 

How to perform a job analysis

Follow these steps to perform an effective job analysis:

1. Determine the goal

Start by establishing the goal of your job analysis. For example, your goal might be determining appropriate compensation for the job, writing or updating a job description or recruiting potential employees for an open role.

2. Consider which jobs you want to analyze

Do you want to analyze an entire department, just a few jobs or a single position? Deciding what jobs you want to analyze and how many can help you select the right method for your job analysis.

3. Select the right job analysis method

Determine which job analysis method will produce the most useful data for your goals. For example, the interview method may not be the right choice if you’re hiring for a completely new role at your company. In this case, external research might be a good choice. If you want to revise a job description, direct observation could be a good, cost-effective choice. Want to figure out how to classify a certain position? A questionnaire could help you determine whether a role should be exempt vs. non-exempt.

4. Create a timeline

Establish a timeline for notifying employees about the analysis, conducting the analysis, reviewing the data and implementing any changes.

5. Prepare your materials

Prepare any necessary materials for the job analysis, like securing a meeting room, purchasing a questionnaire or coming up with interview questions.

6. Complete the analysis

Perform the job analysis using best practices for the specific method you selected. If possible, get input from employees, supervisors and senior managers to get a more well-rounded, in-depth look at the job you’re analyzing.

7. Review your job analysis results

Assess the data to see what the job entails, what skills and qualifications are necessary to perform it well and any other relevant information needed to meet your goals.

8. Use the data

Finally, use the results of your job analysis to establish an updated job description, appropriate compensation, employee development plan or other documents or processes.

If you want to study first the Purpose of Job Analysis! So study for better understand. Then learn the Methods of Job Analysis! Now, Though there are several methods of collecting job analysis information yet choosing the one or a combination of more than one method depends upon the needs and requirements of an organization and the objectives of the job analysis process. Typically, all the methods focus on collecting the basic job-related information but when used in combination may bring out the hidden or overlooked information and prove to be great tools for creating a perfect job-candidate fit. Also learn, Meaning and Definition, Explain the Methods of Job Analysis, with Process!

Selecting an appropriate job analysis method depends on the structure of the organization, hierarchical levels, nature of job and responsibilities and duties involved in it. So, before executing any method, all advantages and disadvantages should be analyzed because the data collected through this process serves a great deal and helps organizations cope with current market trends, organizational changes, high attrition rate and many other day-to-day problems.

Let’s discuss few of job analysis methods that are commonly used by the organizations to investigate the demands of a specific job.

Methods of Job Analysis:

Most Common Methods of Job Analysis

#Observation Method:

A job analyst observes an employee and records all his performed and non-performed task, fulfilled and unfulfilled responsibilities and duties, methods, ways and skills used by him or her to perform various duties and his or her mental or emotional ability to handle challenges and risks. However, it seems one of the easiest methods to analyze a specific job but truth is that it is the most difficult one. Why? Let’s Discover.

It is due to the fact that every person has his own way of observing things. Different people think different and interpret the findings in different ways. Therefore, the process may involve personal biases or likes and dislikes and may not produce genuine results. This error can be avoided by proper training of job analyst or whoever will be conducting the job analysis process.

  Explain Advantages and Disadvantages of Job Analysis!

#This particular method includes three techniques: Direct observation, Work Methods Analysis, and Critical Incident Technique. The first method includes direct observation and recording of the behavior of an employee in different situations. The second involves the study of time and motion and is specially used for assembly-line or factory workers. The third one is about identifying the work behaviors that result in performance.

#Interview Method:

In this method, an employee is interviewed so that he or she comes up with their own working styles, problems faced by them, use of particular skills and techniques while performing their job and insecurities and fears about their careers.

This method helps interviewer know what exactly an employee thinks about his or her own job and responsibilities involved in it. It involves analysis of job by the employee himself. In order to generate honest and true feedback or collect genuine data, questions asked during the interview should be carefully decided. And to avoid errors, it is always good to interview more than one individual to get a pool of responses. Then it can be generalized and used for the whole group.

#Questionnaire Method:

Another commonly used job analysis method is getting the questionnaires filled from employees, their superiors, and managers. However, this method also suffers from personal biasness. A great care should be taken while framing questions for different grades of employees.

In order to get the true job-related info, management should effectively communicate it to the staff that data collected will be used for their own good. It is very important to ensure them that it won’t be used against them in anyway. If it is not done properly, it will be a sheer wastage of time, money and human resources.

These are some of the most common methods of job analysis. However, there are several other specialized methods including task inventory, job element method, competency profiling, technical conference, threshold traits analysis system and a combination of these methods. While choosing a method, HR managers need to consider time, cost and human efforts included in conducting the process.

Process Methods of Job Analysis:

Job analysis data is collected in several ways with only the specification of the person who is going to carry out the job analysis. Often workers from the HR department participate in job evaluations; also depending on the different methods of job analysis even the managers, bosses, and employees participate. During complicated job analysis, the industrial engineers handle the time and motion studies.

  Beauty of Form and Beauty of Mind

Another facet of job analysis is the contemplation of the technique used; some techniques of job analysis or methods are observations, interviews, questionnaires and other specific analysis methods. The applications of the techniques used in job analysis mostly depend on the type of organization, its fundamental requirements, and circumstances.

The various methods of Job Analysis are:

1. Observation:

In the job analysis method of observation, the performance of the worker is monitored by a manager, supervisor or job analyst, industrial engineer; the performance is recorded to see whether the tasks and duties are properly done. Job analysis observation may either be continuous or intermittent sampling but the observation is always of limited use since most jobs do not have the capability of doing the observation of the complete job cycles.

Hence observation is efficient in cyclic jobs and when used combined with other methods. The observation might be used by the supervisor or manager to be familiar with the job and its requirements. During other methods in job analysis, the observation method is immensely useful as it provides vital information about the job.

2. Work Sampling:

Work Sampling is a kind of observation; it does not need thorough concentration in all its minute aspects through the whole work cycle. As an alternative; the person doing the job analysis decides the matter and work pace on a specific workday according to the statistical sampling of various actions rather than by constant monitoring and detailed timing of each action. Work Sampling is most effective for regular monotonous jobs and cyclic repetitive jobs.

3. Employee Diary/Log:

In this method, the employee himself records his performance in a diary/log along with the frequency of the duty and the time needed to perform. This technique is useful in some ways but becomes tiresome for the employees to record all their duties and the timings. Even some employees believe that the employee diary/log method diverts them from their work and creates unnecessary distractions.

4. Interviewing:

In the interview technique of collecting data, the manager or the overseer monitors every job place and the worker performing it. Then a model question or interview form is made to ask the workers and note the answers and to get the proper analysis and complete comprehension of the job and its requirements; one has to talk and interview both the employee and the supervisor.

This method is exhaustive when the interviewer has to converse with two or more employees in one job. Often the professional and managerial jobs are very difficult and complex to analyze; hence require complex longer interviews. Thus the interviewing method should be combined with any other method for proper assessment.

5. Questionnaires:

Questionnaires method is the most popular technique for collecting information in job analysis and a survey device is created and distributed amongst the employees and managers to read and answer. The merits of this method are that bulk information can be collected from the employees without much effort; that also in a short span of time.

But the problems of job analysis is that it assumes the employee to answer the questions truthfully without any bias but that in reality is quite impossible; as opinions on their work and other things will always be influenced by their personal beliefs. Due to this problem, the job analysis questionnaire is mostly combined with the interviews and observations.

6. Critical incident method:

This method consists of observation and documentation of other instances and whether the behaviors were effective or futile to produce the desired results. The critical incident method of behavior includes; the reason of the incident and the circumstance, the work was done by the employee and how it was futile or useful, the assumed outcome of the behavior and also an analysis on the influence the behavior of an employee have on the outcome.

This method vastly differs from the other job evaluation, methods of conducting job analysis as only here the employee behavior is not recorded when it is performed but later when the behavior has been evaluated to be futile or useful depending on the results.

Here the behavior is described in retrospect and it is acknowledged that recording of past actions is more difficult and complicated than of present actions when the performance is continued.

Which of the following will not be collected by a job analysis for collecting information for conducting job analysis?

Performance appraisal is not offered in a job analysis. Performance appraisal means systematic evaluation of the personality and performance of each employee by his supervisor or some other person trained in the technique of merit rating. Was this answer helpful?

Which of the following jobs would be most suitable for the direct observation method of job analysis data collection?

The correct answer is A) janitor A janitor's job would involve direct observation to collect the required data. This direct observation method is useful to attain the information for a specified job. A janitor can directly observe the performance levels and report to the superiors.

Which data collection method is most frequently used in conjunction with direct observation?

56) Which data collection method is most frequently used in conjunction with direct observation? A) interview B) questionnaire C) electronic log D) survey Answer: A Explanation: A) Managers frequently combine direct observation with personal interviews to gather job analysis information.

Which of the following methods is used to gather job analysis data?

c) Observation method. Was this answer helpful?

Jobs in which the Observation method is successful include: Machine Operator/Adjuster. Construction Worker. Police Officer/Patrol Officer.
Information regarding how, why, and when a worker performs each activity is included in the information about _____ an HR specialist may collect during a job analysis. ... .

What are the four 4 job analysis method?

Common methods are observations, interviews, questionnaires, and specialized methods of analysis. Combinations of these approaches frequently are used, depending on the situation and the organization.

What job data is commonly collected during job analysis?

Job Analysis should collect information on the following areas: Duties and Tasks The basic unit of a job is the performance of specific tasks and duties. Information to be collected about these items may include: frequency, duration, effort, skill, complexity, equipment, standards, etc.