Empirical Research on Performance Improvement

Renewed interest in research on performance improvement provides an ideal opportunity to examine how much empirical work is actually published and to identify the focus of research in the field. This paper describes a study conducted to examine the empirical research on performance improvement. The study involved a content analysis of articles published in PIQ from 1997 through 2000. Results indicated that empirical research accounted for about one-third of all articles published in PIQ. A detailed analysis of the empirical research studies published in the journal is provided. Keeps, 1999). Practitioners conduct research to identify performance problems, their causes and solutions to obtain formative data while an intervention is being developed, and to determine if an intervention is successful. Furthermore, academic researchers often collect data to synthesize trends and discover new models, methods, and technologies for performance improvement (Foshay, Moller, Schwen, Kalman, & Haney, 1999). Practitioners and academic researchers use a variety of alternative paradigms, methods, and tools to conduct research on performance improvement. Dean (1999, p. 325) indicated, “The HPT professional uses both quantitative and qualitative data, as needed...uses observation, not hearsay to collect facts...[and] relies on direct, comparative, and economic measures.” Foshay et al. (1999) recommended that investigation of HPT questions require the careful selection and combination of