Utilizing Elaborated Situational Judgment Tests to Improve Selection, Enhance Training, and Facilitate Workplace Understanding and Cohesion

情景判断测试（sjt）越来越被认为是预测组织绩效的一种有价值的工具。然而，许多研究人员注意到，他们在很大程度上不能代表某些行为在组织环境中被认为比其他行为有效的原因，或者为什么受访者选择了效率较低的行为。本项目将侧重于评估详细的情景判断测试（esjt）如何能够解决这一限制，即受访者如何对以不同方式应对SJT情景的预期效果进行额外评估。过去的工作已经详细说明，esjt提供了一种途径，以图形因果模型的形式来表示一个人对与工作相关的情况选择不同反应的原因。本项目将探索如何使用ESJTs来(a)表示不同人群（例如，不同年龄组，性别或种族的个人）如何理解特定的工作场所场景，(b)表示情境因素在改变特定组织行为有效性方面的作用，以及(c)为教授更有效的组织行为提供机会。通过揭露这些过程，EJSTs不仅可以改善人事选拔系统的有效性，为更有效的工作场所培训程序提供信息，还可以促进创造更公平、更包容的工作环境。在项目1中，在一个经过验证的SJT中，对组织情境的不同反应的预期效果的评级将从工作成年人和主题专家那里收集。这些评级将被用来创建新的指标，以衡量员工在何种程度上表现出专家对不同工作情况反应的有效性的理解。这些指数将探讨其预测组织结果的能力，如工作绩效和满意度，而不是其他有效的预测因素。在项目2中，将开发一组新的场景来详细说明具体的上下文因素（例如，截止日期，相对组织级别）如何改变对工作相关情况的偏好一种反应的原因。在项目3中，将探索基于esjt的工具作为教学工具，可以补充MBA和其他专业课程的案例研究，以教授有效的决策，并详细说明不同背景和经验水平的人群如何以不同的方式感知和处理组织情况。然后，这些可以用来提供更具体的点，用于讨论不同的群体如何以不同的方式理解“相同”的组织情况，并用于教导员工对组织情况的不同反应或多或少有效的因素。该项目将生成公开可用的工具，用于从详细的情景判断任务中创建和建模数据，并在选择和工作培训环境中有效地利用它们。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Situational judgment tests (SJTs) are increasingly understood as a valuable tool for predicting organizational performance. However, many researchers have noted that they largely fail to represent the reasons certain actions are judged to be effective in organizational settings than others, or why respondents selected less effective actions. This project will focus on evaluating how elaborated situational judgment tests (ESJTs) – whereby respondents additionally rate the expected effects of responding in different ways to SJT scenarios – can address this limitation. Past work has detailed that ESJTs provide avenues for representing a person’s reasons for selecting different responses to job-relevant situations in the form of graphical causal models. This project will explore how ESJTs can be used to (a) represent how diverse populations (e.g., individuals of different age groups, genders, or ethnicities) understand particular workplace scenarios, (b) represent the role of situational factors in altering the effectiveness of specific organizational behaviors, and (c) provide opportunities for teaching more effective organizational behavior. By bringing these processes to light, EJSTs can be used to not only improve the validity of personnel selection systems and inform more effective workplace training procedures, but also to advance efforts to create a fairer and more inclusive work environment.In Project 1, ratings of the expected effects of different responses to organizational situations within a validated SJT will be collected from both working adults and subject matter experts. These ratings will be used to create new indices of the degree to which employees show an expert’s understanding of the effectiveness of different responses to job situations. These indices will be explored for their ability to predict organizational outcomes such as job performance and satisfaction beyond other valid predictors. In Project 2, a novel set of scenarios will be developed to detail how specific contextual factors (e.g., deadlines, relative organizational rank) alter the reasons for preferring one response to job-relevant situations over others. In Project 3, ESJT-based instruments will be explored as pedagogical tools that can supplement case studies in MBA and other professional programs for teaching effective decision-making, and for detailing how populations with different backgrounds and levels of experience come to perceive and process organizational situations differently. These can then be used to provide more concrete points for discussing how diverse groups come to understand “the same” organizational situations differently, and for teaching employees about the factors that make different responses to organizational situations more or less effective. The project will generate publicly available tools for creating and modeling data from elaborated situational judgment tasks, and for utilizing them effectively in both selection and job training contexts.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.