The Cross‐cultural Transportability of Situational Judgment Tests: How does a US‐based integrity situational judgment test fare in Spain?

Abstract

Despite the globalization of HRM, there is a dearth of research on the potential use of contextualized selection instruments such as situational judgment tests (SJTs) in other countries than those where the selection instruments were originally developed. Therefore, two studies are conducted to examine the transportability of an integrity SJT that was originally developed in the United States to a Spanish context. Study 1 showed that most SJT scenarios (16 out of 19) that were developed in the United States were also considered realistic in a Spanish context. In Study 2, the item option endorsement patterns converged to the original scoring scheme, with the exception of two items. In addition, there were high correlations between the original US empirical scoring scheme and two empirical scoring schemes that were tailored to the Spanish context (i.e., mode consensus scoring and proportional consensus scoring). Finally, correlations between the SJT integrity scores and ratings on a self-report integrity measure did not differ significantly from each other according to the type of scoring key (original US scoring vs. Spanish scoring keys). Overall, these results shed light on potential issues and solutions related to the cross-cultural use of contextualized selection instruments such as SJTs.

Scoring method of a Situational Judgment Test: influence on internal consistency reliability, adverse impact and correlation with personality?

“…These scoring methods used either the 25-50 % endorsement rule used by Chan and Scoring method of a Situational Judgment Test: influence on… 249 Schmitt (1997) or assigned a score to each Likert scale point corresponding to the proportion of subjects in the reference group who endorsed that point (Lievens et al 2015).…”

“…Another example assigns a score to each Likert scale point depending on the proportion of the reference group that endorsed that rating point (Lievens et al 2015).…”

“…Most SJT scoring methods have used the mean as a central tendency statistic, whereas some studies have used the mode (De Meijer et al 2010;Lievens et al 2015). Scoring methods using the mode assign points to the Likert scale point that most of the people in the reference group endorse.…”

Cross‐cultural validity of integrity assessments for lower‐level and higher‐level jobs

“…Historically, integrity assessments have been shown to be valid predictors of both CWBs and job performance (e.g., Berry, Sackett, & Wiemann, ; Ones, Viswesvaran, & Schmidt, ; Sackett & Wanek, ; Wanek, ). More recently, researchers have begun looking at the cross‐cultural validity of integrity measures (e.g., Fine, ; Fortmann, Leslie, & Cunningham, ; Lievens et al, ; Ones, Wiernik, Viswesvaran, & Schmidt, ).…”

“…They found that mean scores and reliabilities were comparable across the three countries (and auxiliary U.S. samples), and that the integrity scores correlated significantly with supervisory ratings of employee CWB in these countries. Lievens et al () studied the transportability of an integrity‐based situational judgment test (SJT) from the United States to Spain. They found that most scenarios developed in the United States were useful in the Spanish context, and that correlations between the SJT integrity scores and ratings on a self‐report integrity measure did not differ significantly based upon the scoring key used (United States vs. Spanish).…”