A Quantitative Review of Performance Feedback in Organizational Settings (1998-2018)

Researchers have extensively studied performance feedback in the past 40 years. In organizational behavior management (OBM), feedback is a popular intervention component that can effectively increase and maintain performance across settings and target behaviors. The purpose of this meta-analysis is to update and extend the previous feedback literature reviews. This meta-analysis includes 96 applied performance feedback applications from 71 articles published in four journals between 1998-2018. We coded each feedback application for application characteristics, feedback characteristics, and rigor of methodology. We evaluated each application's effectiveness by visual inspection and by calculated effect sizes. We conducted a meta-analysis for feedback overall and per feedback characteristics for all applications and for applications that used rigorous methodology by adhering to the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) standards. The meta-analysis results showed that feedback is an effective intervention, consistently producing large and very large effect sizes. Some feedback characteristics produced larger effect sizes more reliably.