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

textabstractSituational Judgment Tests (SJTs) are increasingly used for medical school selection. Scoring an SJT is more complicated than scoring a knowledge test, because there are no objectively correct answers. The scoring method of an SJT may influence the construct and concurrent validity and the adverse impact with respect to non-traditional students. Previous research has compared only a small number of scoring methods and has not studied the effect of scoring method on internal consistency reliability. This study compared 28 different scoring methods for a rating SJT on internal consistency reliability, adverse impact and correlation with personality. The scoring methods varied on four aspects: the way of controlling for systematic error, and the type of reference group, distance and central tendency statistic. All scoring methods were applied to a previously validated integrity-based SJT, administered to 931 medical school applicants. Internal consistency reliability varied between .33 and .73, which is likely explained by the dependence of coefficient alpha on the total score variance. All scoring methods led to significantly higher scores for the ethnic majority than for the non-Western minorities, with effect sizes ranging from 0.48 to 0.66. Eighteen scoring methods showed a significant small positive correlation with agreeableness. Four scoring methods showed a significant small positive correlation with conscientiousness. The way of controlling for systematic error was the most influential scoring method aspect. These results suggest that the increased use of SJTs for selection into medical school must be accompanied by a thorough examination of the scoring method to be used

A Situation Judgment Test for Military Multicultural Decision-Making: Initial Psychometric Studies

Like other organizations with a global reach, the US military faces challenges associated with multicultural teaming. Cultural differences in norms for work and social relationships may impair decision-making. This article reports the initial stages of the development of a Situation Judgment Test (SJT) for multicultural decision-making ability. SJTs may have greater validity than self-reports of competence. An initial SJT was developed on the basis of critical incidents in multinational operations recounted by military Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). Study 1 examined psychometric properties of the SJT in an internet sample of 250 predominantly civilian respondents. Study 2 collected data from 61 US and coalition partner Warfighters participating in a joint exercise. Findings confirmed the reliability of the assessment across different populations, and established a gradation of item difficulty. Civilian and military samples show somewhat similar response patterns suggesting that multicultural decision-making may reflect shared Western values. Implications for assessment and training are discussed