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Performance evaluation (also commonly called performance appraisal or performance review) is the personnel activity by means of which an organization determines the extent to which employees are performing their jobs effectively. It is impossible to manage an organization without information 09 how well employees are performing: Judgments about performance will be made whether or not there is a formal program, and many will be erroneous. A formal program attempts to minimize errors and assure that the information obtained is useful for its intended purposes. Thus, formal performance evaluation is a conventional management activity in American business, and most surveys show that over three-fourths of United States business organizations have appraisal programs.Yet, a recent Conference Board report of a survey of 293 firms concludes, "However necessary some formal appraisal system appears to be, current systems are still widely regarded as a nuisance at best and a dangerous evil at worst."' Performance evaluation is a personnel activity which, while not new, has not yet matured. Some significant studies have been done, but there are conflicting results, and a complete body of knowledge is still years away.2 However, environmental factors are beginning to exert pressures on performance evaluation programs. Social changes, government pressures, and new laws are requiring that programs be reexamined. This process will bring about a more mature and effective activity. Moreover, organizations will find it necessary to alter their performance evaluation practices in order to maintain or improve their human resource utilization and overall organizational effectiveness.

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The function of attitudes and/or behavior in most empirical studies is not fully understood. This study was undertaken to isolate some variables that are important in the f3rmulation of perspective and to use these variables to form homogeneous groups so that patterns among the variables may be used in future studies to better understand attitudes and/or behavior. The study was conducted in State College, Pennsylvania, and the subject content of the study was a public forested area known as State Game Lands 176. Both user and general populations of the State College area were sampled to obtain a diversity of results about the functional nature of attitudes and/or behavior. Results indicated that there were differences among individuals with regard to the larger context. These results are suggestive of research to relate attitudes and/or behavior to these functional dimensions to better understand the relationships among these variables.

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