Hi birdoo2 and welcome to the InfoPathDev forums
I hope I can answers some of your questions for you.
IS IT SUITABLE?
I do think InfoPath could be a very good solution for what you need to do. InfoPath is very versatile when it comes to how the forms get filled out. You could have a SharePoint site setup where managers or supervisors would go to fill out the employee reviews and then they when they submit the forms, they are submitted to SharePoint and you can controll the access to who views them. SharePoint is included with Windows Server 2003 if you are using that on your server. Or users can do this via email. Download the form from a central location, fill it out and move it along via email (requires Outlook). It's very flexibile this way. You could even have the form submit to an Access or SQL database and do your reporting from there.
Downside to InfoPath is that everyone who needs to fill out the survery is going to need to have their own InfoPath license installed. that is a downside. InfoPath 2007 suppors browser based forms, so not everyone would need InfoPath license, but, not all features of the rich client are going to be supported in the browser version.
I think InfoPath is very suitable for this type of form, one of the best options available.
TECHNICALLY AWARE?
How technically aware you need to be depends upon how complex you want to make the form. The use of code is not necessary (or desireable) for most solutions. It is pretty "WISYWIG" for the most part. You do need to understand InfoPath pretty well to do what you want to do, that will help tremendously (these forums are a great resource too)
WORD
Not easy. There is no "convert to Word" option directly. It can be done, but it's time consuming and does require a good deal of knowledge of InfoPath, XML and reading the InfoPath SDK to get it to work right. If this is a requirement of your workflow, it might be an issue - however, InfoPath may eliminate the need for Word entirely in my opinion, there is no reason why in most situations the review could not be finished in InfoPath itself.
LIKERT SCALES
Yes, you can add these in. Use the "Option Button" control and add 5 buttons, very easy
Good luck!