<p><b>Competency:</b> Competencies are &quot;...characteristics that are causally related to effective and/or superior performance in a job&quot; (quoted from: Boyatzis, R.E. (1982). <u>The competent manager: A model for effective performance</u>. New York: John Wiley &amp; Sons; page 23.)</p>
<p><b>Domain:</b> A domain is the scope of a subject, which herein is a set of competencies. Each set of competencies was combined into a domain based on the doctoral dissertation work of Dr. Janetta DeOnna (c.f., DeOnna, Penn State University, 2006: <u>Developing and Validating an Instrument to Measure the Perceived Job Competencies Linked to Performance and Staff Retention of First-Line Nurse Managers Employed in a Hospital Setting</u>.)</p>
<p><b>Importance:</b> The level of meaningfulness, value or relevance a competency has with regard to the successful implementation of the employee's job responsibilities. That is, how important is performing this competency in the ability of the employee to carry out his/her job responsibilities successfully?<font size="-2" face="Verdana" color="#333333"><br />
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<p><b>Performance:</b> Effective Performance is &quot;... a &quot;minimally acceptable&quot; level of work, the lower cutoff point below which an employee would not be considered competent to do the job&quot; (quoted from: Spencer, L. &amp; Spencer, S. (1993). <u>Competence at work: Models for superior performance</u>. Wiley: New York; page 13.)</p>
<p><b>Z-Score:</b> The z-score is a statistical measure that looks at not just the size of the difference between scores, but how meaningful that difference is. It converts raw scores to a number that more reliably indicates the importance of the difference between an individual's scores and the overall average of the group.</p>
<p>Large positive numbers indicate higher performance and large negative numbers indicate lower performance, relative to the rest of the group.  The closer a z-score is to zero, the more likely that that individual's performance is similar to the overall average of the group.</p>
<p>A z-score of -1 to +1 encompasses about 67% of the population.  See the distribution below for more information.</p>
<p align="center"><img align="center" alt="z_score" src="/graphics/z_score.png" /></p>