Putting judging situations into situational judgment tests: evidence from intercultural multimedia SJTs

Although the term situational judgment test (SJT) implies judging situations, existing SJTs focus more on judging the effectiveness of different response options (i.e., response judgment) and less on how people perceive and interpret situations (i.e., situational judgment). We expand the traditional SJT paradigm and propose that adding explicit assessments of situational judgment to SJTs will provide incremental information beyond that provided by response judgment. We test this hypothesis across 4 studies using intercultural multimedia SJTs. Study 1 uses verbal protocol analysis to discover the situational judgments people make when responding to SJT items. Study 2 shows situational judgment predicts time-lagged, peer-rated task performance and interpersonal citizenship among undergraduate seniors over and above response judgment and other established predictors. Study 3 shows providing situational judgment did not affect the predictive validity of response judgment. Study 4 replicates Study 2 in a working adult sample. We discuss implications for SJT theory as well as the practical implications of putting judging situations back into SJTs.