Section Fourthere may be increased validity and less likelihood of bias.
Unfortunately, research to date on BARS has not yet
demonstrated that they are superior to other rating approaches
in interrater reliability or in reducing leniency or halo errors.
(Halo errors occur when an outstanding rating on one
dimension of performance carries over to affect ratings on
other dimensions.)^7
In spite of the failure of research to demonstrate the
superiority of BARS, the greatest contribution of the BARS
approach may be through its role as a feedback mechanism.
Because of its focus on behaviors, the use of BARS may be less
likely to lead to employee defensiveness and the feedback may
be heard. Likewise, the BARS format produces ratings that are
directly useful in developmental counseling because the
employee knows the behaviors that should be adopted or
discontinued. Further, its behavioral anchors carry numerical
values, which can be summed across performance dimensions
to provide an index translatable into merit increases in
compensation. Unfortunately, BARS are applicable to only the
specific jobs for which they are developed. As a result, it is
practical to use them only for jobs having large numbers of
incumbents because of their considerable developmental
expense and the statistical expertise required. This is
unfortunate, because further up the job hierarchy, there are
ordinarily fewer job incumbents at the managerial and