It is well known that the average individual who has reached maturity, and whose habits are formed, will perform his accustomed tasks and duties with remarkable uniformity; a fact which is evidenced by the general similarity of marks assigned to a particular individual while serving under the same commanding officer. Yet change the commanding officer and a different set of marks will indicate the individual’s fitness, though the new marks will, similarly, display uniformity. What then has changed? Not the officer’s manner of performing his duty. Only the commanding officer has changed. These different marks thus represent, not a difference in the work of the officer, as in theory they should, but a difference in the viewpoint of the marking officer. They mark the commanding officer, as it were, though incidentally they help or injure the one marked, as the case may be.
Is there any practical method for overcoming this personal equation? I think so, and suggest the following procedure. Let each marking officer enter on every fitness report a “master mark” which shall represent his general opinion of the officer marked, looked at from every angle. This mark will not replace any other mark, nor will it be an average of the others, but it will be the most important mark, as the final summing up of all the officer’s qualities; his general value to the service.
After all the fitness reports have gone to Washington twice a year, all the master marks will be averaged, one for each officer in the Navy. Likewise, every master mark given by each marking officer will be averaged for such officer. There will then be entered upon every fitness report the general average master mark of the Navy, and the average master mark of the officer signing the fitness report. Suppose the fitness report of Jones comes before a selection board. It shows that he has a master mark of 3.6 and that the general Navy master mark is 3.7. At first glance this would look as if he were below the Navy average. However, the report is signed by Captain Smith whose average of assigned master marks is only 3.5; hence Jones is shown as really above the average in Captain Smith’s opinion. On the other hand, Gray has a master mark of 3.7, but appearing on a report signed by Captain Black whose average of master marks is 3.8. As between the two it will be made clear that Jones has essentially a better mark than Gray, though nominally a poorer one. By this method the handicap of serving under a low marking captain is removed from the shoulders of Jones while the high marking proclivities of Captain Black no longer cause him to function as a Santa Claus for Gray.
However, the average master mark for each marking officer should be obtained from all such marks on record, in order to avoid an abnormally high or low (for him) result due to commanding a particularly efficient group of officers, or the reverse, for the time being. Finally, when the fitness report of a particular officer comes before a selection board, the members of the latter, being able to consider the mark assigned in relation to the general Navy master mark, and to the particular captain’s master mark (and the latter in relation to the general mark as being higher or lower), will be in a much better position than at present to determine the value to be read into the figures, and to gather the precise intent of the commanding officer when he had made the report and to understand the officer’s actual relative standing.