An application of the situational interview to selection of nursing personnel

The study was designed to develop a situational interview technique to replace the unstructured interview commonly used in the selection process of nursing personnel and explore the applicability of incorporating the situational interview and psychological tests into the development of a regression model of nursing personnel selection. The authors collected from several teaching hospitals in Kaohsiung job-related critical incidents which were used to construct the questionnaire for the situational interview and the performance appraisal checklist. A sample of subjects, 198 in the first year but only 116 the second year, were interviewed and evaluated with the situational interview, the Nursing Image Scale, the Work Values Inventory, and part of the Gordon Personal Profile-Inventory as predictor measures and the performance appraisal checklist as the criterion measure. The results showed that the reliability and validity coefficients of the situational interview were close to or even better than those obtained by the previous researchers in the same field. The reliability and validity coefficients of the performance appraisal checklist indicated its applicability and suitability. Multiple regression analysis indicated that the situational interview as well as some traits measured by the personality and values tests could predict the performance appraisal scores of nursing personnel.