Standardized State Assessment

Abstract

Contemporary theories of personality require psychological assessments that take person-situation processes into account. This is most commonly achieved via ambulatory assessments that sample individuals within their real-life environments. An alternative approach aims at measuring person-situation processes by incorporating hypothetical situation descriptions. However, thus far, no detailed guidelines exist on how to develop such measures so that they validly assess person-situation processes. In this article, we propose Standardized State Assessment as a methodological framework for the assessment of situation-specific states in hypothetical situations. We build on theoretical advances in personality research and previous assessment approaches to derive guidelines for a theory-driven development of hypothetical situation descriptions. We further describe how states should be measured in these situations. Finally, we propose that appropriate latent measurement models and validation strategies may help to develop assessments that are similar to real-life person-situation processes. In the first empirical example ( N = 238), we demonstrate the suitability of the framework. Standardized State Assessment may offer economically advantageous alternatives for research or applied settings in which ambulatory assessments are unfeasible. Moreover, we discuss how this framework may help to answer theoretical questions on person-situation processes.