bject on a variety of subjects and can simply not respond to questions where the respondent does not have personal knowledge. For example, a subordinate might have day-to-day experience with a supervisor's delegating technique while a peer might not be aware of how the manager handles this task.
Some questionnaires use multiple choice answers only while other questionnaires use a combination of multiple choice answers and comments from the respondents (O'Reilly 93). Offering comments generally only works in those situations where the subject will not be able to identify which respondent made which comment; such a situation can help ensure anonymity among respondents.
After the questionnaires have been completed and returned, the results are gone over with the subject. This part of the process can be the most critical since it is how the subject reacts and whether the subject modifies behaviors based on the feedback that determines whether the process will succeed or fail.
Some companies use a third party to collect, analyze and explain the results to the managers in question. These companies find that having a professional provide the feedback to the manager can help with the manager's acceptance of the information. In addition, the professional may be able to offer insight about changes the manager could make from a behavioral standpoint in order to address the issues raised by the questionnaires (Carey 56).
In other cases, the managers simply receive reports indicating how they scored on the questionnaires. Depending on the environment, the report may contain information which compares the manager's performance to other managers in the company, or to other managers in different companies. Typically, questionnaires are developed for a single company (and sometimes for each employee) separately since the needs from industry to industry, company to company and even department to department can vary significantly (Yukl ...