Perceived Fairness in Goal Setting scale

Abstract

The Perceived Fairness in Goal Setting scale is an influential, psychometrically sound, unidimensional measurement instrument developed by Quinetta M. Roberson, Narda A. Moye, and Edwin A. Locke (1999) to evaluate employee evaluations of procedural justice within organizational and laboratory goal-setting processes. Grounded in the intersection of goal-setting theory and organizational justice frameworks, the instrument specifically isolates the perceived fairness of procedures used to determine, formulate, and establish performance standards. Comprising three concise items evaluated along an expansive 9-point Likert-type response format ranging from 1 (“not at all”) to 9 (“extremely”), the scale captures procedural justice perceptions distinct from both participatory voice mechanisms and outcome-based distributive fairness. Psychometric evaluation of the scale demonstrates exceptional internal consistency reliability, yielding a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .94 in its foundational validation study. Confirmatory factor analyses across subsequent empirical investigations have robustly verified its single-factor structure, establishing strong convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity. Specifically, the scale has been proven to function as a vital cognitive mediator through which employee participation translates into heightened task satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior, and performance commitment. This article provides an exhaustive examination of the scale’s theoretical underpinnings, psychometric architecture, construct boundaries, statistical validity, factor structure, scoring conventions, and research applications in industrial and organizational psychology and management science.

Keywords

Perceived Fairness in Goal Setting, procedural justice, goal setting theory, organizational justice, task satisfaction, employee participation, performance management, psychometrics, Edwin Locke, Quinetta Roberson

Authors

The scale was developed and psychometrically validated by a prominent research team specializing in human resource management, organizational behavior, and motivational psychology:

• Quinetta M. Roberson, Ph.D. — Currently the John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Management and Psychology at Michigan State University (previously at the Villanova School of Business and Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations). Her scholarship centers on diversity, equity, organizational justice, and strategic human resource systems.
• Narda A. Moye, Ph.D. — Organizational scholar formerly affiliated with the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park, whose research contributions address employee empowerment, leadership development, and justice perceptions in dynamic work environments.
• Edwin A. Locke, Ph.D. — Dean’s Professor Emeritus of Leadership and Motivation at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Locke is internationally renowned as the pioneer of Goal-Setting Theory, universally recognized among the most empirically validated theories in modern organizational and applied psychology.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Perceived Fairness in Goal Setting scale is to provide a rigorous, theoretically parsimonious assessment tool for capturing how individuals perceive the equity, neutrality, and systemic integrity of the processes used to set their performance goals. Historically, researchers examining performance management often conflated employee participation with justice, assuming that simply giving individuals an opportunity to speak (“voice”) automatically caused elevated performance or satisfaction. Roberson, Moye, and Locke (1999) developed this instrument to untangle this empirical ambiguity and test the definitive cognitive mechanisms operating between participative decision-making and organizational outcomes.

In applied organizational environments, goal setting is not merely a cognitive benchmark; it represents an interpersonal and administrative social contract between an organization, supervisors, and employees. When performance quotas, key performance indicators (KPIs), or experimental task goals are established, individuals instinctively scrutinize the administrative procedures governing those decisions. The scale assesses whether employees view the underlying rules, calculations, allocations, and procedural decisions as objective, unbiased, and equitable, rather than arbitrary or exploitative.

Within organizational psychology and human resource development, the scale serves critical diagnostic and empirical functions:

• Empirical Research and Mediation Modeling: It allows scholars to model procedural justice as an explicit cognitive mediator, distinguishing procedural fairness from distributive fairness (the perceived fairness of the goal itself or resulting rewards) and interactional fairness (the interpersonal treatment received from leadership).
• Diagnostic Assessment of Performance Management Systems: Human resource professionals utilize the instrument to audit annual performance appraisal cycles, evaluating whether employees perceive objective benchmarking as fair or whether top-down assigned goals elicit resistance, cynicism, and perceived procedural illegitimacy.
• Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Research: The scale’s sensitivity makes it ideal for laboratory simulations comparing assigned goals, participatively set goals, and “do your best” instructions, enabling precise measurement of post-manipulation justice perceptions.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by this instrument is procedural justice in goal setting. Procedural justice refers to the perceived fairness of the policies, processes, and mechanisms utilized by decision-makers to arrive at allocations, evaluations, or standards, rather than the intrinsic fairness of the outcome itself (distributive justice).

Within the operational boundaries of this scale, the construct is deliberately delineated to isolate procedural fairness from participative involvement. While participation captures whether an individual had an opportunity to speak, contribute, or negotiate (often referred to as process control or “voice”), procedural fairness captures the subjective judgment that the systemic procedures governing goal formulation were just, unbiased, and appropriate. This distinction is conceptually fundamental: an employee may participate fully in a goal-setting discussion, yet still perceive the underlying organizational procedures as biased or rigged; conversely, an employee may have a goal assigned without direct voice, yet perceive the analytical procedure used to calculate the goal as thoroughly fair, logical, and transparent.

The construct encompasses several foundational cognitive judgments:

• Neutrality and Freedom from Bias: The conviction that goals are derived through standard, uncorrupted, and objective methodologies rather than managerial favoritism, punitive intent, or subjective whim.
• Procedural Consistency: The belief that the standards and criteria governing goal difficulty and goal attainment expectations are applied stably across individuals, departments, and time periods.
• Systemic Legitimacy: The global cognitive appraisal that the organizational performance appraisal machinery adheres to rational principles of equity and ethical appropriateness.

Because the scale focuses exclusively on procedural justice within goal setting, it operates as a unidimensional, high-bandwidth construct. Rather than partitioning procedural fairness into micro-facets, the instrument captures an integrated cognitive assessment of procedural legitimacy that strongly influences subsequent affective attitudes and behavioral intentions.

Theoretical Framework

The development of the Perceived Fairness in Goal Setting scale is anchored in the theoretical convergence of two major paradigms in organizational science: Goal-Setting Theory (Locke & Latham, 1990) and Organizained Justice Theory, particularly procedural justice formulations advanced by Thibaut and Walker (1975) and Leventhal (1980).

For decades, motivational theorists debated the comparative efficacy of participative goal setting versus assigned goal setting. While early human relations advocates argued that participation inherently elevated job satisfaction and motivation, comprehensive empirical meta-analyses and joint experimental designs (e.g., Latham, Erez, & Locke, 1988) revealed that when goal difficulty is held constant, assigned goals and participatively set goals frequently yield identical levels of task performance. However, participatively set goals routinely generated superior task satisfaction and organizational commitment.

To explain this “missing link” between participation and employee satisfaction, Roberson, Moye, and Locke (1999) synthesized justice theory into the motivational architecture. Drawing upon Thibaut and Walker’s (1975) control models and Lind and Tyler’s (1988) Group-Value Model, the authors posited that participation influences psychological outcomes because it validates an individual’s standing within an organization and signals procedural fairness. According to Leventhal’s (1980) procedural criteria, procedures are judged fair when they are consistent, bias-free, accurate, correctable, representative, and ethical. In goal-setting environments, when employees perceive that procedures adhere to these justice rules, cognitive dissonance and feelings of exploitation are eliminated. Consequently, procedural fairness operates as the critical mediating psychological process: participation triggers perceptions of procedural fairness, which in turn drive enhanced task satisfaction, organizational identification, and higher goal commitment.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Perceived Fairness in Goal Setting scale has been extensively corroborated across diverse experimental, field, and cross-sectional studies:

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity was initially established by Roberson, Moye, and Locke (1999) in a controlled experimental design involving undergraduate participants assigned to a complex simulated management task with varying degrees of participation (voice vs. silent/assigned conditions). As hypothesized, scores on the scale demonstrated robust convergent validity, exhibiting statistically significant positive correlations with perceived participation (r = .71, p < .01) and task satisfaction (r = .46, p < .01). Furthermore, experimental manipulations of voice directly shifted scores on the scale, demonstrating its sensitivity to genuine variations in procedural execution.

Discriminant Validity

To establish that the scale does not merely reflect generalized positive affect or overlapping justice dimensions, researchers have conducted rigorous discriminant validity testing. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the 3-item procedural fairness measure is empirically distinct from measures of distributive justice (fairness of outcomes/ratings), interactional justice (interpersonal dignity and informational communication), and perceived self-efficacy. Correlations between procedural fairness in goal setting and outcome satisfaction routinely fall within moderate ranges (.35 to .50), confirming that respondents clearly differentiate between the fairness of the process used to set goals and their satisfaction with the consequences or difficulty of the goals themselves.

Predictive and Criterion-Related Validity

Subsequent literature in applied psychology has verified the predictive validity of the scale across multiple organizational contexts. High scores on the scale consistently predict elevated goal commitment, reduced turnover intentions, heightened perceived supervisor support, and enhanced organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Structural equation modeling (SEM) has repeatedly confirmed that the scale accounts for significant variance in job satisfaction over and above objective task performance, affirming its role as an indispensable predictor of affective work outcomes.

Reliability

The Perceived Fairness in Goal Setting scale possesses exceptional internal consistency reliability despite its concise length. In the foundational validation study conducted by Roberson, Moye, and Locke (1999), the instrument achieved a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .94, reflecting superior internal homogeneity and low measurement error.

The high internal consistency is directly attributable to the precise semantic formulation of the items, which evaluate procedural equity from complementary angles (procedural rules, determination methods, and overall process fairness). Subsequent replications and organizational field investigations utilizing the measure have consistently confirmed alpha coefficients exceeding the recommended psychometric threshold of .80, regularly reporting coefficients ranging between .88 and .95:

• Roberson, Moye, and Locke (1999) — Initial validation: α = .94
• Independent organizational replications — Alpha coefficients consistently documented between α = .89 and α = .93 across operational field samples.

The use of an expansive 9-point Likert-type response format maximizes scale variance and enhances reliability coefficients, allowing respondents to report subtle gradations in perceived fairness without experiencing artificial ceiling or floor compression.

Factor Analysis

The underlying latent structure of the Perceived Fairness in Goal Setting scale has been systematically evaluated through both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA):

Factor Structure and Dimensionality

Both exploratory factor analyses (utilizing principal axis factoring and maximum likelihood estimation) and confirmatory factor analyses demonstrate that the scale is strictly unidimensional. All three items load onto a single dominant latent factor representing Procedural Fairness in Goal Setting. In empirical evaluations, the single factor accounts for over 85% of the total variance among the items.

Factor Loadings and Fit Indices

In structural modeling and confirmatory factor analyses:

• Standardized factor loadings for each of the three items consistently exceed .85, with loadings frequently reaching .90 to .95, demonstrating that each item is an exceptional indicator of the latent procedural justice construct.
• In multi-dimensional measurement models evaluating procedural, distributive, and interactional justice simultaneously, the single-factor model for this 3-item scale exhibits excellent fit indices (e.g., Comparative Fit Index [CFI] > .98; Tucker-Lewis Index [TLI] > .97; Root Mean Square Error of Approximation [RMSEA] < .05; Standardized Root Mean Square Residual [SRMR] < .03).
• Alternative models specifying procedural justice and participation as a single collapsed factor demonstrate significantly degraded fit compared to two-factor models separating voice from procedural justice judgments, empirically justifying the distinct psychometric status of this scale.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Perceived Fairness in Goal Setting scale
• Authors: Quinetta M. Roberson, Narda A. Moye, and Edwin A. Locke
• Year of Publication: 1999
• Test Type: Self-report psychometric questionnaire
• Target Population: Working adults, organizational employees, managers, and laboratory participants involved in goal-setting and performance appraisal tasks
• Number of Items: 3 items
• Response Scale: 9-point Likert-type scale anchored at: 1 = “not at all” to 9 = “extremely”
• Scoring Protocol: All three items are positively worded; there are no reverse-scored items. A composite procedural fairness score is calculated by computing the arithmetic mean across the three items (ranging from 1.0 to 9.0). Higher mean scores represent greater perceived procedural fairness in the goal-setting process.
• Administration Time: Less than 2 minutes
• Language: English

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Perceived Fairness in Goal Setting scale was published in 1999 in the Journal of Applied Psychology (Volume 84, Issue 4, pages 585–593). The instrument was placed directly in the text of the academic article (p. 588) by the authors for empirical and scientific dissemination.

In accordance with standard academic conventions, the instrument may be utilized free of charge by researchers, scholars, graduate students, and non-commercial educators for scientific and diagnostic research without formal royalties, provided that full and accurate bibliographic citation is accorded to Roberson, Moye, and Locke (1999) and the American Psychological Association (APA). Commercial applications, integration into proprietary software assessment platforms, or republishing in commercial testing batteries may require formal copyright permissions and licensing through the American Psychological Association (APA Permissions).

References

• Latham, G. P., Erez, M., & Locke, E. A. (1988). Resolving scientific disputes by the mutually agreed upon experimental paradigm: A story of goal-setting research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 73(4), 753–772. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.73.4.753
• Leventhal, G. S. (1980). What should be done with equity theory? New approaches to the study of fairness in social relationships. In K. J. Gergen, M. S. Greenberg, & R. H. Willis (Eds.), Social exchange: Advances in theory and research (pp. 27–55). Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3087-5_2
• Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. (1988). The social psychology of procedural justice. Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2115-4
• Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (1990). A theory of goal setting & task performance. Prentice-Hall, Inc.
• Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705–717. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.705
• Roberson, Q. M., Moye, N. A., & Locke, E. A. (1999). Identifying a missing link between participation and satisfaction: The mediating role of procedural justice perceptions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84(4), 585–593. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.84.4.585
• Thibaut, J., & Walker, L. (1975). Procedural justice: A psychological analysis. L. Erlbaum Associates.

Items of the Scale