Abstract

Managers of forest enterprises, as managers of many other enterprises and organizations want to know the performance levels of their employees. For this reason, many enterprises use various methods to determine the performance levels. The primary purpose of this study is to develop a Performance Evaluation Scale (PES) in order to determine the performances of the forest engineers who are currently working at the forest enterprises in Aegean Region, and then to investigate the validity and reliability of the scale. This study was conducted within the 23 forest enterprises of Denizli, Izmir and Mugla Forest Regional Directorates in the Aegean region of Turkey. A total of 52 criteria were determined for performance evaluation as a result of focus group meetings and individual interviews conducted with the experienced forest engineers. These criteria were scored by 85 forest engineers by using a questionnaire designed according to the nine-grade Likert scale. Appropriateness of the data was evaluated via the t test, the Bartlett Sphericity test and the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test. Then, the data were converted into the factors which are less and significant and independent of each other, with explanatory factor analysis method. Thus, the six factors describing 68.67% of the total variance were obtained. Each of the factors was named according to the factor loads and the criteria and then, the scale was formed. Finally, confirmatory factor analysis was performed and five-factor structures with an acceptable level of goodness of fit indices were created.

Key words: Aegean region, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), forest engineer, performance evaluation scale, Turkey.