Welcome to our Knowledge Base
Glossary
| Term | Explanation |
| 360 | Refers to relationships from an individual’s perspective. In GideonSoft, these relationships are Supervisor, Peer, Subordinate, or Other. |
| Baseline Evaluation | This is an evaluation that has been designated as a baseline for all other evaluations of the same type to be compared with. |
| Commitment | In GideonSoft, this is a specific task or action (associated with a Responsibility or a Goal) that either the team member will “commit” to performing or that a leader recommends should be performed. |
| Criminal | One of four possible thresholds that can be set in GideonSoft, based on a score variable, that GideonSoft uses to help identify individuals who have failed to meet a goal or target. “Criminal” typically describes a score below average but close enough to include for reporting.
For example: For a test on a 100 point scale with an average score of 80, a Suspect threshold would be 70 and a Criminal threshold would be 60. (See “Suspect”) |
| Degree | Degree is a numerical value of the response/rating given as an evaluation, or the amount to which an evaluation was observed (e.g. an athlete’s strength rated at 67 is a lower degree than one rated at 83). In GideonSoft, this applies to Surveys or imported evaluations; the value of the response may or may not be visible to the observer/respondent, depending on the input configuration. |
| Descriptive | This data type is text or numeric information that describes an individual. Examples are Age, Home Town or Jersey number. |
| Evaluation | An evaluation is a rating (i.e. observation or value judgment) about a person. It is given by an evaluator/observer and it is given at a certain time. A person can receive numerous evaluations for a single measurement variable. |
| Goal | Goals are set, defined and tracked by an individual, and only apply to that individual. They can be made private or public (visible to other GideonSoft users), and involve making Commitments to achieve the Goal. |
| Instance | Contained within a Module, an Instance is a measurement period, where all data is collected. This is the lowest level in the Organizational structure. |
| Module | Essentially, the Module is a container from which all Instances are built. Modules contain a template with Surveys, Observation Events, Reports, Spreadsheets and other settings configured to be used at the Instance level. |
| Job | Part of GideonSoft’s Continual Progress Review (CPR) process. A set of responsibilities that define a role people will be required to perform within an organization or a module. A Job is created and shared, as a ‘template’, that can be put into action as one or more Positions. |
| Objective | Objectives are created by a supervisor or coach, and assigned to an individual or a group of people (a “top down” approach). Objectives are Instanced-based and based on existing score variables, whereas Goals can be created at will and independent of variables. |
| Position | Part of GideonSoft’s Continual Progress Review (CPR) process. A unique occurrence of a Job that only one person can hold; there can be multiple Positions performing the same Job. |
| Responsibility | Part of GideonSoft’s Continual Progress Review (CPR) process. This is a duty or significant activity that a person will be accountable to perform or complete; it is broad and not bound to time. A Job/Position can have many Responsibilities, and involves making Commitments to fulfilling the Responsibility. |
| Sample size | Describes the number of people that were used to derive the average and standard deviation of a score variable. |
| Score | This is numerical data about a person. This can be a raw value or calculated based on one or more evaluations or descriptives, or even other scores. A person can receive numerous evaluations for a measurement variable, which is important for monitoring performance and delivering feedback. However, analysis will often require a single value for a variable (e.g. a count or average of all the evaluations; or only the most recent evaluation) which in GideonSoft is defined as a Score. |
| Severity | Severity is a numerical value representing how “important” a rating/response is. Severity determines not only whether an evaluation is positive or negative, but how positive or negative. In GideonSoft, severity is configured along with a behavior, so the observer is not aware what the severity of the behavior is (e.g. the behavior “Candidate didn’t shave” is less severe than “Candidate lost weapon”). |
| Standard Deviation | Describes how much variation exists for a score variable. It can apply to everyone in a Module (i.e. population), everyone in an Instance, or a subset of everyone in an Instance. |
| Stretch | One of four possible thresholds that can be set in GideonSoft, based on a score variable, that GideonSoft uses to help identify individuals who have performed above and beyond a goal or target.
For example: For a test on a 100 point scale with an average score of 80, a Stretch threshold would be 90. |
| Suspect | One of four possible thresholds that can be set in GideonSoft, based on a score variable, that GideonSoft uses to help identify individuals who are in danger of not meeting a goal or target. “Suspect” typically describes a score just below average.
For example: For a test on a 100-point scale with an average score of 80, a Suspect threshold would be 70 and a Criminal threshold would be 60. (See “Criminal”) |
| Variable | A numerical or text value that can change over time, and is usually affected by its context. Examples are a response to a survey question, or an average of ratings of a person’s performance. |
| Z Score | Also called a ‘standard score’. It indicates how many standard deviations from the mean a data point is. The value of a z-score may be positive (above the mean) or negative (below the mean). A z-score enables us to compare two scores that may be on different metrics, and allows us to calculate the probability of a score occurring within our normal distribution.
In GideonSoft, this can be used in conjunction with a “Convert Z Score to Percentile” score variable to enable an ‘apples to apples’ comparison of multiple performance ratings that have used different rating scales. |