What About The Other Core Evaluations? The Development And Validation Of A Measure Of Core Other-evaluations And Its Relevance For Organizational Teams

Abstract

The construct of core self-evaluations has garnered a great deal of attention in the organizational psychology literature and has been hailed as one of the strongest predictors of job satisfaction. However, the construct of core self-evaluations is only one of the three core evaluations that Judge and colleagues originally described in their seminal work (Judge, Locke, & Durham, 1997). It is predicted that much can be explained about the dynamics of teams and the propensity to excel in a team environment through the study of core other-evaluations. With that objective, the current study developed and validated a comprehensive measure of core other-evaluations, referred to as the Core Other-Evaluations (COE) scale. The construction of the measure mirrored the theory of Judge and colleagues (Judge et al., 1997; Judge, Erez, Bono, & Thoresen, 2003), taking a comprehensive approach to scale development and validation. First, a series of pilot studies were conducted to develop the initial item subset, demonstrate support for the construct of core-other evaluations, examine the relations of the core-other evaluation sub-construct manifestations with the core-other evaluation items, and demonstrate support for the psychometric utility of the retained items for the core other-evaluations scale. Then a cross-validation study was conducted to further examine the retained items using IRT techniques, explore construct and criterion-related validity, and investigate the presence of group differences. The results indicated support for the existence and efficacy of the core other-evaluations construct, the predictive power of core other-evaluations with regard to important work criteria, the incremental validity of core other-evaluations over core self-evaluations, and the lack of differential item functioning or group differences with this measure. Taken together, these findings bolster the argument that the construct of core other-evaluations is not only useful in a theoretical context, but also with regard to practical utility. Practical implications and future directions are discussed.