Output rates, taken from company records, of four groups of foundry employees working under a financial incentive system were analyzed. Two groups worked on individual incentives (28 machine molders and 35 chippers and grinders), and two groups worked on group incentives (19 hand molders and 28 machine molders). The production of all groups was above the established standard of 100. Their week-to-week consistency, using average rhos, varied from .67 to .82. These and other findings are related to the results of a series of similar studies of output rates among a wide variety of industrial employees, and particularly to the notion that under certain circumstances consistency of output may be indicative of level of output and also of the effectiveness of "incentivation" to perform. The inconsistency of (industrial) behavior and the need for longterm samples to establish a criterion for testing or other validation purposes is emphasized.

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The most difficult problem confronting industrial psychologists today is probably that of finding an adequate criterion against which to measure the effect of some variable that is introduced. It is far easier to make a reliable employment test than it is to validate that test. It is easy to convince oneself of the value of rest periods, music, foreman selection, a training program, etc , but it is very difficult to prove that value. Production figures are commonly considered to be the most desirable criterion, but very little is actually known about this criterion How are these output rates distributed, and are they consistent from time to time? What generalizations can we make about production figures as a criterion? The present papers report one study of output rates as a criterion.Nature of the Data The data for this study were taken from the official books of the Standards Department of the Four Wheel Drive Auto Company, located at Clintonville, Wisconsin. 1 They cover the period from December 10, 1945 through January 20, 1946. They refer to regular employees in the machine shop of that firm. The men were working at their regular jobs and at their usual workplaces. It should be recalled that this was a period of acute shortages in materials for this and most other plants. This prevalence of shortages is an uncontrolled variable insofar as comparing these with other data. On the other hand this kind of a situation ("not normal") represents the realistic condition that constantly exists in industrial work and the data are therefore more, rather than less, valuable since they reflect industry in operation.The operators in this shop were on standards but not on incentives That is, a standard hours work had been determined by time studies but the men were paid on an hourly rate basis. The existence of these standards makes possible a combining of the outputs of men doing different 1 Grateful acknowledgment is made to Robert A. Olen, General Manager of the Four Wheel Drive Auto Company, for permission to publish these data, and to G. F. DeCoursin, Manager of the Standards Department, for aid in collecting and analyzing these data.