Situational Judgment Test

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A Situational Judgment Test (seldom German: test for the assessment of the situation ) is a method used primarily in aptitude diagnostics to record social knowledge as a component of social competence .

Situations are presented to those tested either through video presentations or in writing. Multiple-choice alternative answers are usually given , such as how the situations are perceived (especially in the case of video presentations) or which reactions or alternative courses of action are possible, from which the most suitable is to be selected. Variants are to choose the one that most people would choose, or to judge each alternative in terms of its effectiveness, or to choose the most unsuitable.

Sample task

“ Imagine the following situation: Your manager criticizes your performance. However, they feel that this criticism is not justified. How should you best act in this situation?

  1. I complain to a colleague about the manager.
  2. I will notify the works council.
  3. I accept the criticism and try to improve my performance.
  4. I will notify the next superior.
  5. I try to clarify my mistakes with my supervisor in a factual discussion. "

The validity varies greatly, with correlations to supervisor assessments varying between −0.05 and 0.33. In Belgium, Lievens and co-workers use an SJT as part of admission to medical studies . A video-based form correlates to 0.07 with the examination performance and 0.34 with an interpersonal criterion. The paper version correlates to 0.10 with the examination performance and only 0.08 with the criterion “interpersonal skills”. Video sequences work better because social competence relates to at least two components: correct recognition and evaluation of social situations and knowledge of how to react correctly to the recognized requirements. It should be noted that answers based on social desirability can falsify the results. The assessment of which answers are correct is made beforehand by expert judgments.

A variant that is used in MedAT for admission to medical studies as "social decision-making" also offers situations, in which case 5 considerations are to be classified according to their "importance" for the decision-making situation. This is not explained further. In a video of the ÖH to prepare for this test it is shown that the tasks are based on the graded theory of moral development by Lawrence Kohlberg . If this information is known, the task is reduced to assigning the alternative answers to these levels and arranging them according to the "height" of the moral development. Those who only work through the official preparatory material will not receive this information. With this knowledge, the test is reduced to a comparatively simple analysis and should hardly say anything about the person's social competence.

literature

  • MS Christian, BD Edwards, JC Bradley: Situational judgment tests: constructs assessed and a meta-analysis of their criterion-related validities. In: Personnel Psychology. Volume 63, No. 1, 2010, pp. 83-117.
  • F. Lievens, PR Sackett: Video-based versus written situational judgment tests: A comparison in terms of predictive validity. In: Journal of Applied Psychology. Volume 91, No. 5, 2006, pp. 1181-1188.
  • F. Lievens, PR Sackett: The validity of interpersonal skills assessment via situational judgment tests for predicting academic success and job performance. In: J Appl Psychol. Volume 97, No. 2, Mar 2012, pp. 460-468.
  • F. Lievens, PR Sackett, T. Buyse: The effects of response instructions on situational judgment test performance and validity in a high-stakes context. In: Journal of Applied Psychology. Volume 94, No. 4, 2009, p. 1095.
  • MA McDaniel, NS Hartmann, DL Whetzel, WL Grubb: Situational judgment tests, response instructions, and validity: A meta-analysis. In: Personnel Psychology. Volume 60, No. 1, 2007, pp. 63-91.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Social knowledge in COD Encyclopedia of Psychology
  2. ↑ Sample task on tipps.jobs.de
  3. ↑ News on Situational Judgment Tests on obermann-consulting.de
  4. ↑ Why is there no “Situational Judgment Test (SJT)” used in the EMS? K.-D. Hang on unifr.ch/ztd
  5. ^ "Subtest social decision-making". Script from the Institute for Psychology at the University of Graz, available from the Virtual Medical Campus of the University of Graz , free registration required
  6. ↑ MED-AT revision courses 2017 part 2 of the ÖH Med Vienna from minute 2:50