Importance of doing the job well in deciding pay

How important how well a person does the job should be in deciding pay; the 1998 item asks about pay for two people doing the same kind of work, while 2000 and 2021 ask how much people ought to earn in general.

AI-matched An AI model grouped these questions and mapped their answers onto shared categories, and a second AI review checked and corrected the grouping and mapping. No person has checked it: compare the question wordings and the answer mapping below before reading the lines against each other.

Latest: 9% answered “Fairly important” in GSS: Importance of doing the job well in deciding pay, 2021.

Percentages ofpeople who answered everyone asked

All answers over time

Share answering

Essential Very important Fairly important Not important (not very/not at all)

Dashed lines mark changes in how interviews were done, which can shift answers: 1. GSS: Importance of doing the job well in deciding pay → web (2021).

Shares of everyone asked, including non-answers. Each point is one survey wave at the middle of its field period. Lines from different surveys are never spliced together.

Questions in this trend

Line	Question	Match	How answers map
GSS: Importance of doing the job well in deciding pay	Importance of doing the job well in deciding pay In deciding on pay for two people doing the same kind of work, how important should be … A. How well the person does the job? Caveat: Frames pay for two people doing the same work; the bottom two options are collapsed.	equivalent	Essential → Essential; Very important → Very important; Fairly important → Fairly important; Not very important → Not important (not very/not at all); Not important at all → Not important (not very/not at all)
GSS: Importance of doing the job well in deciding pay	Importance of doing the job well in deciding pay In deciding how much people ought to earn, how important should each of these things be, in your opinion: F. How well he or she does the job (how important should that be)? Caveat: Frames how much people ought to earn, as one of several factors; the bottom two options are collapsed.	equivalent	Essential → Essential; Very important → Very important; Fairly important → Fairly important; Not very important → Not important (not very/not at all); Not important at all → Not important (not very/not at all)