A Behavioral Economic Evaluation of Preference and Reinforcer Assessment Methods in Organizational Behavior Management

Abstract

There are several available methods for identifying incentives that employees would prefer to work for. However, few organizational behavior management studies have directly evaluated the reliability and validity of these formats. This experiment was a translational research study evaluating the correspondence between and the validity of three preference assessment formats: a Likert-type survey, a ranking task, and a hypothetical work task, which asked participants whether they would be willing to complete a given number of work units to earn an incentive. Participants first completed the three preference assessments, followed by two multielement reinforcer assessments. The first reinforcer assessment examined responding for each incentive at a low, fixed response requirement. In the second reinforcer assessment, participants worked for each incentive on a progressive ratio reinforcement schedule. Finally, participants completed follow-up preference assessments. There was high correspondence across preference assessment formats and between preference and reinforcer assessment outcomes. Results demonstrated the viability of this methodology for evaluations of preference and reinforcer assessments in work-related contexts.