Peer evaluations
allow group members to provide feedback on each other's performance.
Peer evaluations are conducted in school and work settings. Not only do they allow individuals to understand how their peers view their performance, but also allow superiors to gain insight into activities that they may not have been involved in.
Type of Evaluation
Peer evaluations can either be stated vocally in a private or group setting or they can be done by filling out a form that asks specific questions. A vocal evaluation encourages discussion and answers that can be expanded on whereas forms provide more orderly evaluations that are easier to compare. The best option for you really depends on the purpose of the evaluation, the people who will be evaluated or are doing the evaluations and the sensitive nature of the activity being evaluated.
Evaluation Questions
Open ended questions encourage far more feedback. If this is what you are looking for, ask questions such as "What strengths did your peer bring to the group" or "What roles did your peer take on". If you are looking for shorter, descriptive answers, indicate this in your question. For example, "State three words that describe your peer's strengths and three words that describe his weaknesses." Finally, if you are hoping to gain numerical data from peer evaluations, you need to ask peers to assign a grade to each other or to answer a list of questions, with each answer correlating to a numerical value. For example, you could ask people to state on a scale of one to ten how their peers performed on specific tasks, or you could have a list of true and false questions with true being one point and false being zero.
Self-Evaluations
In addition to peer evaluations, ask everyone to evaluate their own performance. Self evaluations encourage self-reflection, ownership and critical thinking. They also provide another element to the comparison process and expose potential discrepancies between individuals and their peers.
