Knowing What NOT To Do Is a Critical Job Skill: Evidence from 10 different scoring methods

Abstract

Situational judgment tests (SJTs) have become an increasingly important tool for predicting employee performance; however, at least two key areas warrant further investigation. First, prior studies of SJTs have generally relied on samples from the western world, leaving open the question of the validity of using SJTs in the developing world where the majority of the world's workforce resides. Second, there is currently no standardized, theoretically-based method for the development and scoring of SJTs. Therefore, SJTs are highly domain-specific and must be developed anew for each new context. We report the results of three studies, conducted in India, that aim to: (1) test the cross-cultural validity of SJTs in a non-western context, and (2) examine the differential validity of 10 different approaches to scoring SJTs, some of which have the potential to resolve the problem of developing a theoretically-infused, standardized approach to scoring and future development.