150 • JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



5. — Personal Qualities: 



(a) Strength and health, personal appearance, congeniality, personal 



habits. 



(b) Readiness to shoulder responsibility for his own acts. 



(c) Integrity, loyalty, dependableness, enthusiasm, optimism, courage, 



prudence, industry, decision, initiative, patience, perseverance, 

 self-control, carefulness, economy, amenableness to reason, 

 aggressiveness, sense of justice, diplomacy. 



Though this fairly completes the action and development of the 

 scale to the point of presentation, there are one or two additional items 

 which should be noted as having a general application on future de- 

 velopment. 



It is clear that for effective general use a relation must be established 

 between rating officers. An effort was made to secure this by requiring 

 that the complete process be prepared. This was not called for in 

 report form but was to be discussed thoroughly with one general 

 personnel officer who would become familiar in this way not only with 

 the men in the posi'tions being rated but with the rating officers them- 

 selves. Many of the lists actually used the same men. As these 

 identical individuals were rated by different officers, a relation between 

 the rating officers themselves is established which is of material assist- 

 ance in determining the relative positions of the individuals whom 

 they rate. 



No effort was made to go beyond this point in actual practice though 

 it is obvious that further division of the final list must be made in order 

 to determine the point at which promotions shall be given. It would 

 be possible to do this by rating on a percentage basis to a theoretically 

 perfect example of man for the position being rated. This is not 

 readily workable because it destroys the basic comparative principle. 

 The resultant list may, however, be divided into equal sections — the 

 first or top section to be promoted in a certain manner. The bottom 

 section perhaps no promotion at all, and the intermediate sections to 

 an average degree. 



It is interesting to notice in closing that the scale here presented has 

 actually been used in practice. It has not only been productive of 

 results satisfactory to the rating officer in each individual instance, 

 but has actually brought different rating officers together in result 

 where the same list of subordinate personnel was considered separately 

 by the men rating. It is also of interest that as acquaintance with the 

 scale develops the results by different men are increasingly effective 

 and more uniform. The error percentage in any case as between 

 different men was determined almost entirely negligible. 



