Thought Leadership Articles
Kenexa HR Thought Leadership™ articles are experience-driven pieces that discuss best practices in the Human Capital Management (HCM) space. These articles are written by skilled HR practitioners or technologists who initiate or provide new thinking on a specific component of HR. Kenexa HR Thought Leadership articles discuss strategies on new or existing HR topics and educate readers about future possibilities and considerations on those topics. The overall purpose of these thought leadership articles is to engage readers through original, innovative ideas that are supported by the knowledge and experience of the author.
Scoring Situational Judgment Tests: Does the Middle Matter?
By Jeff Weekley, Ph.D., Kenexa
In the typical situational judgment test (SJT), an applicant is presented with a series of situations he or she could be expected to encounter on the job (these situations are usually determined via a job analysis). In most cases, each situation has four or five possible responses and the applicant is asked to indicate how he or she would handle that situation from the choices available (see the following example). While situational judgment tests have been around for many years, they have recently begun to garner much attention in the research literature (e.g., Chan & Schmitt, 1997; Clevenger, Pereira, Wiechmann, Schmitt, & Harvey, 2001; McDaniel, Morgeson, Finnegan, Campion, & Braverman, 2001; Olson-Buchanan, Drasgow, Moberg, Mead, Keenan, & Donovan, 1998; Smith & McDaniel, 1998; Weekley & Jones, 1997; 1999; Weekley & Ployhart, 2002). This increased popularity of SJTs is undoubtedly due to research demonstrating a number of positive features. First, research indicates that SJTs can validly predict performance and do so incrementally over the typical “benchmark” test of mental ability. Second, SJTs produce smaller subgroup differences (less potential for adverse impact) and more favorable applicant reactions than do tests of general mental ability.