Importance Of Job Analysis: The Position Analysis Questionnaire

Job analysis is necessary to make sure that jobs are up to date on their qualifications and skills needed. Many different techniques are used to create a job analysis. A technique that job analysis use is the Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ). The PAQ is described as a technique that analyze a job based on six categories. These six categories include: informational input, mental process, work output, relationships with other persons, job context, and other job characteristics. The PAQ is beneficial to employers, because of the fact that it helps to provide a very detailed profile for particular jobs to either be compared with jobs similar to that in other organizations or to compare other jobs within companies. In 1975, Arvey and Begalla

Each category for the PAQ is used to analyze the qualities and responsibilities needed to do the job. Information input is “where and how the worker obtains the information needed to perform the job” (Riggio, 2013). A chef obtains their information by going to culinary school and getting hands on experience. Mental process is the thinking, reasoning, and decision-making skills needed for the job. A chef would need to make food combinations that they believe would work together. They need to make measurements of how much to put into each dish they make. Work output is the tasks and materials needed for a worker to perform well. A chef must have all the ingredients needed for making food that they would want to make and the knowledge on how to make that specific food. Relationship with other persons is the necessary relationships and contacts needed to do the job. For chef’s, getting a referral from a school that you once went is beneficial to get a job in the future. The fifth is job context, which is the physical or social contexts where the work must be performed. Chef’s work in kitchens, it can be either very small, or huge. The space is not only for them but for many other workers as well. Lastly there is other job characteristics, which would include relevant activities, conditions or characteristics that are beneficial to doing the job. For a chef, other job characteristics needed would be to be social and able to work with

Arey and Begalla wanted to use the PAQ technique in order to have people recognize and learn to appreciate the role of the homemaker. Results showed that the role of the homemaker, if paid would make the same amount as a patrolman, about $740. Today, that $740 would be about $40,000. By using the PAQ technique Avery and Begalla were able to show what qualities and skills a homemaker needed, which then showed that there were some skills similar to other jobs that are considered dangerous. Shaw and Riskind (1983), wanted to use the PAQ to find if there was a relationship between different job levels (e.g. lawyers vs college professors) and job stress. The study included ninety-two different jobs (i.e. managers, service jobs, and technicians). Their results showed that there was a correlation between job PAQ scores and stress data that they collected. No matter if the job was considered high or low stress, the PAQ scores that were found had similar stress data in both stress