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Abstract
This study examines how public managers’ proximity to the performance measurement process affects their perceptions of their agencies’ performance measurement criteria, which is a form of measurement validity. The main variables of interest are managers’ proximity to the performance measurement process and their accuracy in assessing the value content expressed in their agencies’ performance measurement criteria. Inaccuracy or ‘bias’ is measured as the difference between managers’ subjective perceptions of the values expressed in their agencies’ performance measurement criteria, compared with objective measures derived from content analysis of the agencies’ annual performance and accountability reports. The pertinent values are efficiency, customer service satisfaction, service quality, and social equity. The prevalence of each value is compared across time and in various stages of the policy process at the agency level. In this study, the units of analysis are U.S. federal government managers in the 23 largest U.S. federal government agencies, enabling both individual and agency level analyses. Data come from the 2013 and 2017 annual performance and accountability reports for each agency (N=23), and the 2013 and 2017 Federal Managers Survey on Organizational Performance and Management Issues (N=2,762 in 2013 and N=3,114 in 2017). Multi-level models are employed in the study. The main results show that proximity affects managers’ perceptions of their agencies’ performance measurement criteria, and greater proximity can result in either overestimation or underestimation depending upon the form of proximity (subjective or objective). The study thus introduces the concept of proximity to the performance management literature and shows how it influences managers’ perceptions of their agencies’ performance measurement criteria.