Situational Judgement Tests for Selection

Are You a Good Friend? Assessing Social Relationship Competence Using Situational Judgments

“…To do so, we turned to an empirically supported model for assessing abilities in real-world contexts—situational judgment tests (SJTs; Corstjens, Lievens, & Krumm, 2017). SJTs function by presenting test-takers with low-fidelity simulations of potential events, situations, and conflicts that a person might encounter in a workplace setting.…”

“…Ability-based instructions require respondents to pick the most effective response option or to rate the effectiveness of the various options provided (McDaniel, Hartman, Whetzel, & Grubb, 2007). If test-takers are able to identify effective ways of responding, while ruling out poor response options, the test-administrator can infer that (a) they know how to effectively respond to the particular class of situations modeled, which is knowledge that (b) is likely to be enacted when similar relevant situations present themselves while on the job (Corstjens et al, 2017).…”

“…The method allows one to model a particular class of situations, thereby focusing on the sorts of person-situation transactions posited by developmental and personality psychologists (Baumert et al, 2017). Also, the method does not ask people whether they possess the knowledge in question, which could be problematic, but rather makes such determinations on the basis of an answer key (Corstjens et al, 2017). Through procedures of this type, one might be able to align participants along a social competence dimension that should be relevant in understanding their social lives.…”

A closer look at response options: Is judgment in situational judgment tests a function of the desirability of response options?

“…In line with this notion, situations are usually viewed as the core component of SJTs. This is also why many guidelines for test developers emphasize the need (i) to identify job‐related critical situations by interviewing subject matter experts (SMEs), (ii) to screen and select situations for appropriateness, and (iii) to write comprehensive item stems enabling test takers to envision the critical situations and react to them (Corstjens, Lievens, & Krumm, ; Weekley & Ployhart, ). In short, a costly procedure is seen as vital to equip SJTs with their purportedly most important feature, that is, situation descriptions.…”

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“…They created a taxonomy of SJT features and used that framework to summarize research using a content analysis. Corstjens, Lievens, and Krumm (2017) described the contextualization of SJTs and how that makes them similar to assessment centers and work samples but at a lower level of fidelity.…”