Factor analysis of OSS Situational Tests.

Abstract

ANY present-day personality psychologists and psychometricians are heir to a trait or faculty theory of human behavior. The fond hope of some of them is the discovery of a set of traits or faculties which are capable of predicting the behavior of individuals. They have carried the search for stable traits into the realm of constitutional types, biologically rooted motives, neurotic complexes, primary mental abilities. These psychologists are faced with the disturbing knowledge, gained from common sense and empirical evidence, that the situation in which the individual is placed often determines his behavior, at least in part. Anthropologists, for instance, have demonstrated that the social behavior of an individual is to a large extent determined by the culture and the social class to which he belongs. As a result, there is increased awareness among personality psychologists and psychometricians of the need to take into account the situation in which individuals operate.This trend can be seen in the development of situational tests by the personnel of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II to assess candidates for the Service. These situational tests were distinguished by the fact that a person's qualifications were tested in a number of different situations. Previously, the general practice was to devise a test-often a paper-and-pencil test-which was conceived to measure a trait applicable to any situation. In the defense of the use of situational tests, the OSS Assessment Staff (4, p. 35) claimed that their use led to a more accurate study of a man's varied components of personality:Underlying our recommendation for the inclusion of many varied procedures is the well-accepted fact that in order to formulate a personality one must know many of its components, and therefore, since 1 The writer wishes to express appreciation to Rinehart and Company for permission to use data from Assessment of Men (4) for this analysis and to Dr. Evelyn Raskin and Dr. C. F. Wrigley for helpful criticism of the manuscript.

Everything that you have ever been told about assessment center ratings is confounded.

“…After over 60 years (see Sakoda, 1952), the literature on ACs still sways between a focus on dimension-and a focus on exercise-related sources as the major contributors to reliable variance in AC ratings. Scrutiny of this literature reveals confounding, which raises challenges to ascertaining which factors are associated with reliable AC variance.…”

The internal structure of situational judgement tests reflects candidate main effects: Not dimensions or situations

“…It is possible that the SJT literature could stand to gain from 'lessons learned' in other areas of the organizational literature with respect to dimensions and their measurement properties. In particular, the assessment centre (AC) literature has grappled with analogous dimensions and their contribution to AC ratings for over six decades (see Sakoda, 1952). While the AC context is different from that presented by SJTs, the AC literature has, nonetheless, utilized innovative analytic approaches to help inform on complex psychometric designs (e.g., Jackson, Michaelides, Dewberry, & Kim, 2016;Woehr, Meriac, & Bowler, 2012;Woehr, Putka, & Bowler, 2012).…”

The person and the situation in an international model of behavior

“…(1) In terms ofperson variables, using (a) the situational input (content) of the mediating process, i.e. how situations are perceived and interpreted (see e.g., Pervin, 1968; Magnusson, 1971Magnusson, , 1974 b), (b) mediating, motivational variables (see e.g., Stern, Stein &Bloom, 1956;Stern, 1970) or (c) reaction variables (see e.g., Sakoda, 1952;Endler, Hunt & Rosenstein, 1962; Ekehammar et al, 1974;Magnusson & Ekehammar, 1975 b), as the basis for the classification. This approach has been dominated by empirical studies.…”