On Designing Construct Driven Situational Judgment Tests: Some Preliminary Recommendations

Situational judgment tests (SJTs) are widely agreed to be a measurement technique. It is also widely agreed that SJTs are a questionable methodological choice for measurement of psychological constructs, such as behavioral competencies, due to a lack of evidence supporting appropriate factor structures and high internal consistencies. Nevertheless, both the peer review literature and applied instances of SJTs reveal no shortage of attempts to measure psychological constructs with SJTs. While acknowledging the lack of evidence supporting the ability of SJTs to assess psychological constructs, we see that a number of practical benefits would accrue to organizations if industrial psychologists were able to design SJTs that measure psychological constructs. Accordingly, this article presents a discussion of steps that psychologists can take to enhance the chances of observing validity evidence for construct based SJTs.