The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 requires each government agency to develop a performance-based employee appraisal system. The purpose of this study was to determine how to train effectively more than 200,000 Air Force civilian employees to use the Job Performance Appraisal System (JPAS) designed by the Air Force. Experimental comparisons were made of the differing versions of two basic instructional prototypes: instructor-led and self-instructional. Results demonstrate that each approach teaches all occupational levels equally well, provided the instructor-based training is led by someone who is very knowledgeable in the system. Although students responded somewhat more positively to instructor-led training than to self-instructional training, the instructor-led training took more time than the self-instructional training (16 hours for the instructor-led training versus a maximum of 11.5 hours for the self-instruction). Since the demand on human resources for the instructor-led course is significant when thousands of persons must be trained, administratively and in terms of cost-effectiveness, the self-instructional package is preferable. (Author/KC)