The effect of job title on job evaluation rating

This study was designed to study the effects of job title on job evaluation ratings. There were three variables that were expected to affect job evaluation ratings. These were job title status, job description status and rater familiarity with a job. It was predicted that jobs with high status job titles would be rated higher than jobs with low status job titles, as indicated by a title effect and that jobs with high status descriptions would be rated higher than jobs with low status descriptions, as indicated by a description effect. It was also predicted that raters who were more familiar with a job would rely more on the job title as a source of information when evaluating a job, while raters who were less familiar with a job were expected to rely on the job description as a source of information. There were two categories of job descriptions used in this study: Secretarial and Engineering. The Secretarial positions were expected to be more familiar to the raters, while the Engineering positions were expected to be less familiar. A MANOVA was conducted in order to assess the effect of the job title and the job description, while a hierarchical regression was used to assess the effect of rater familiarity on job evaluation ratings. The results indicated that there was a title effect and a weak description effect for the Secretarial positions. There also appeared to be a title effect for the Secretarial positions which changed as a function of rater familiarity with a job. There was no significant title or description effect for the Engineering positions. There was however, a complex and unexpected three way interaction between rater familiarity, job title and job description.