The importance of considering criterion deficiency was highlighted by a study examining the
economic utility of company wide training programs addressing managerial and sales/technical
skills. The economic utility of training programs may differ
not because. bf differences in the effectiveness of the programs per se, but because the criterion
measures may differ in breadth. In other words, the amount of change observed in an employee's
performance after she attends a training program will depend on the percentage of job tasks
measured by the evaluation criteria. A measure including only a subset of the tasks learned during
training will underestimate the value of the training program.