Individual Assignment on Education and Job Performance

Education Definition

Education refers to the scholastic knowledge, scholastic degrees and/or the number of academic years a person has achieved from all levels of educational institutions: secondary school, university as well as graduate school.

Performance Rating Definition

Performance rating defines as the job evaluation on employees’ task, citizenship as well as counterproductive performance . Task refers to a set predetermined duties related to a particular job and it places emphasis on objective criteria such as efficiency and productivity. Citizenship performance refers to organizational engagement outside employees’ task performance that helps to enhance the overall productivity of organization. Counterproductive performance defines to employees' actions such as theft that hurts the company's interest.

The proposed hypothesis is that job performance is positively related to education e.g. obtaining higher education level yields better job performance.

Study and Empirical Evidence: Education and Job Performance

The article College education and police job performance: A ten-year study conducted data related to the above-mentioned two variables from the police department. Due to the unclear connection between the two variables, the authors did not make any hypothesis.

Truxillo, Bennett and Collins (1998) categorized education as the education degrees attained as well as the number of school years obtained by police officers. Data were obtained by surveying 84 police officers. The education degrees were coded as binary variables with no for 1 and yes for 2. The sample means for college degree and university degree were 1.24 and 1.18, respectively. Years of school were measured on a five-point scale and had a sample mean of 3. In addition, Truxillo, Bennett and Collins (1998) assumed education was a predicting factor of police officers’ performance.

The study focused on the supervisory rating aspect of the job performance on the same 84 policy personnel. In particular, supervisory rating on participants’ job knowledge along with four other elements were measured using a five-point scale. The sample mean of job knowledge was 4.43.

The result of the study showed there was a statistically significant correlation between education and supervisory ratings of participants’ knowledge. Obtaining two-year degree (r=0.24, p

Finds from the study supports the hypothesis, which proves that higher job performance is associated with higher education.

Relationship Explanation

Two factors cognitive ability and consciousness contribute to the positive relationship in study result.

First, cognitive ability can be improved through higher education and it has a positive relationship with performance. Schools stimulate innovative thinking and encourage students to brainstorm by encouraging student debates and student clubs. Empirical evidence supported the fact that higher education was associated with the higher cognitive ability. Furthermore, study conducted in the 1990s concluded that cognitive ability was strongly related to performance (r=0.51).

Second, education links to consciousness and consciousness results in higher job performance. In order to achieve academic success, students have to plan homework and assignments in advance and finish them on time. Researchers discovered that higher conscientiousness leads to higher education. Moreover, conscientiousness was positively related (r=0.24) to job performance.

Therefore, higher education leads to higher job performance.