Objective Performance Feedback: Is Numerical Accuracy Necessary?

Performance feedback is ubiquitous in Organizational Behavior Management (OBM); yet its essential components are still debated. It has been assumed that performance feedback must be accurate, but this assumption has not been well established. Two experiments were carried out to research feedback accuracy. Experiment 1 was a single-subject design where performance feedback accuracy was manipulated. Results from Experiment 1 suggested feedback may not need to be accurate to improve performance prompting a follow-up study. Experiment 2 was a repeated measures between-groups design with three types of objective feedback: accurate, high (triple) and low (1/3) inaccurate, and no feedback control. Both accurate and tripled feedback significantly improved performance over the control and low-inaccurate feedback groups. Performance feedback may have reduced time off-task across all three feedback conditions compared to the control. Data from performance feedback research need multi-faceted analysis to fully understand how and why performance feedback changes behavior.