The Situational Judgment Test: Cognition, Constructs and Criterion Validity

The Situational Judgment Test (SJT) is a personnel selection test in which a hypothetical scenario is provided, and the applicant asked to choose one or rate multiple answers. Unlike conventional knowledge tests, performance does not rely upon typical academic intelligence. A key requirement of research is to fully understand the construct validity, criterion validity and SJT theory. This thesis is a set of 3 studies that investigates firstly, the construct validity of an SJT in medicine, secondly, establishes a new construct of interest to the SJT (formal operational thought, FOT) and thirdly, investigates FOT in relation to both the construct and criterion validity of an SJT in medicine. In study 1 a current model of the construct validity of the SJT was examined alongside two measures assessing individual differences that are not currently included in SJT theory (‘Need for Cognition’ and ‘Occupational Self-Efficacy’) with the aim of increasing the amount of variance explained in SJT scores. Neither existing theory nor the additional variables significantly explained SJT performance. Inspection of the literature revealed aspects of intelligence previously unexplored in relation to the SJT; fluid intelligence and FOT. A new measure of FOT was validated and FOT was conceptualised as a higher level ability for complex reasoning, independent to that used for primary cognitions. Study 3 then assessed FOT, SJT performance, academic attainment and job performance within medical students. FOT scores did not significantly explain variance in the SJT scores. However, they had incremental validity over the SJT in explaining actual job performance. The studies demonstrate that introducing FOT yielded additional unique variance over the SJT when explaining job performance and that this concept is a higher level thought store, independent of procedural and declarative knowledge stores. These ideas are presented in a theoretical model integrating existing intelligence and SJT theory.