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Deconstructing Situational Judgment Tests: Response Evaluation and Situational Judgment as Predictors of Situational Judgement Test Performance
No full textSituational Judgment Tests (SJTs) are widely considered to be simulative tools used for personnel selection (Weekley et al., 2015). Their resurgent popularity since the 1990’s (Motowidlo et al., 1990) can be attributed to both their cost-efficiency and their predictive validity (Christian et al., 2010; Lievens et al., 2003). SJTs usually comprise short, often work-related situation descriptions and several response options that participants are instructed to pick from, regarding either their choice of behavior in a given situation, or their assessment of effectivity for each option (McDaniel & Nguyen, 2001).
In 2015, a scientific debate around SJTs arose. It started with the work of Krumm et al. (2015). The authors found that for many SJT items, situation descriptions can be omitted without impairing item difficulty, suggesting that situation descriptions may not be all that relevant for SJTs. Across several SJTs, these authors found that between 43 and 71% of SJT items can be solved equally well with vs. without situation descriptions (see also Schäpers et al., 2019).
As a response to their findings, Fan et al. (2016) as well as Melchers and Kleinmann (2016) argued that SJTs may still be “situational”, even if presented without situation descriptions. That is, test takers may be able to reconstruct the relevant situations on the basis of the set of response options. Evidence for this notion was recently presented by Freudenstein et al. (2020). These authors found that the situation construal (in terms of the DIAMONDS; Rauthmann et al., 2014) predicted SJT responses regardless of whether this construal was made on the basis of response options only or on the basis of the entire SJT item including a situation description. So, relevant situation construal was possible even when situation descriptions were omitted and when decisions had to be made on the basis of only 4 to 5 response options per SJT item.
Another line of research suggests that even a single response option out of the usually presented set of 4 to 5 response options can provide valuable insights to test takers. Leeds (2018), for example, revealed that general correctness perceptions of single response options were predictive of SJT responses. Similarly, Kaminski et al. (2019) found that the plausibility as well as the social desirability of response options (as judged per individual response option) explained a substantial proportion of variance in SJT responses. These authors revealed that the relevance of social desirability was evident across full SJT item versions as well as SJT items without situation descriptions. So, besides the set of response options, even individually presented response options may convey useful information for test takers.
Additionally, some authors have presented evidence in favor of the relevance of situation descriptions For example, Rockstuhl et al. (2015) showed that when participants were asked to judge situations, their judgment was not only moderately correlated with typical SJT responses but also provided incremental validity beyond typical SJT responses in predicting task and contextual performance. Notably, while situational judgment was made on the basis of situation descriptions only (i.e., an open-ended SJT was administered), criterion validity of SJTs was higher when response options were utilized.
Taken together, we argue that the ongoing debate as well as related scientific evidence suggests that SJT items comprise several relevant sources of information: the situation description, the set of response options, single response options, as well as the combination of all these sources.
The herein preregistered study will consider these sources by administering four different, deconstructed versions of the same SJT item in a within-subjects design—(i) SJT items without situation descriptions, but with their normal set of response options (clustered responses), thus following the tradition of Krumm et al. (2015); (ii) individual response options presented in pseudo-randomized order (i.e. randomizing all response options once, then keeping that order) with three different instructions (behavioral tendency instruction, knowledge instruction, and social desirability-instruction), thus following the tradition of Leeds (2018) and Kaminski et al. (2019) and examining the effects of response instructions on the most fine-tuned response option-level; (iii) only situation descriptions (i.e. an open response format), thus following the tradition of Rockstuhl et al. (2015); as well as (iv) full SJT items
Subjective well-being consequences of the aspiration–attainment gap
No full textAn occupational aspiration–attainment gap (AAG) is defined as the discrepancy between the socio-economic status (SES) of the aspired and attained occupation. In our research, we investigate how experiencing an occupational AAG after the transition from school to vocational education and training (VET) affects the subjective well-being (SWB) of German youth. For this purpose, we use representative longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) that allow us to track youth’s SWB across their transition from school to VET and over a period of 1 to 3 years after entry into VET
Creativity and everyday bodily movement
No full textThis study aims to investigate if everyday physical activity influences creative ideation performance in the verbal and figural domain. An interactive ambulatory assessment in combination with multilevel analyses will be applied to test the hypothesis if prompts following periods of higher physical activity (e.g., walking and running) are associated with increased creative ideation performance (in the verbal and figural domain) compared to prompts following periods of lower physical activity (e.g., sitting).
Creative ideation plays an important role in our everyday life – the same is true for physical activity. Although, many laypeople might think that only eminent historical figures can be labeled creative, creative ideation takes place in everyday life settings. An idea is considered creative if it is unique, applicable, and innovative/new. Many different methods exist to investigate the creative ideation processes (physiological methods: Fink et al., 2018; Rominger et al., 2018; Silvia et al., 2014a; behavioral methods: Benedek et al., 2017a; Rominger et al., 2017; Rossmann & Fink, 2010). However, most studies took place in a laboratory setting and only a limited number of studies was ambulatory (Benedek et al., 2017a; Conner & Silvia, 2015; Karwowski et al., 2017; Silvia et al., 2014b). The current study will use an interactive ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in combination with physiological data (i.e., physical activity) to investigate creative ideation performance where it takes place – in our daily life.
However, most laboratory studies investigated (high intensity) sport interventions and only a few of them analyzed daily physical activities, such as walking (Lambourne & Tomporowski, 2010; Oppezzo & Schwartz, 2014; Richard et al., 2020; Rominger et al., 2020). Additionally, available EMA studies assessed creativity via self-report scales (Conner et al., 2018; Silvia et al., 2014b), which can be criticized (Fahrenberg et al., 2007). Therefore, to overcome these limitations, the current study uses an interactive psychophysiological ambulatory assessment applied in everyday life. Physical activity will be assessed via an accelerometer sensor. The sensor will be worn throughout the day and guarantees an objective assessment of movement/physical activity in everyday life. Ambulatory creative ideation performance will be measured via divergent thinking tasks in the verbal and figural domain. Additionally, an interactive algorithm will be used to provide creative performance tasks after periods of physical active/inactive.
Therefore, we will apply the Activity-Inactivity-Algorithm of Ebner-Priemer et al. (2013). This algorithm triggers a prompt on the smartphone app if a certain threshold of activity/inactivity is reached. After each prompt a creative ideation task (verbal or figural) and further questions will be applied. Furthermore, the algorithm adapts to each subject’s physical activity level. Therefore, interindividual differences of physical activity can be controlled for. Based on this approach and the available literature we hypothesis that prompts associated with physical activity will go along with higher creative ideation performance outcome (i.e., originality) compared to prompts with physical inactivity.
Beside this main hypothesis, the second part of the study investigates different facets of creativity. The current study uses three different measures of creativity: creative ideation performance in the field, creative potential assessed by a laboratory paper-pencil assessment, and creative achievements. Creative ideation performance will be assessed by divergent thinking tasks (verbal and figural) during the EMA. Creative potential is the ability to produce creative ideas (TCT-DP). Creative achievements are e.g., having written a book or composed a song. Past studies indicated that these three measures of creativity should be connected (Diedrich et al., 2018). Therefore, we hypothesized that: (1) Higher creative ideation performance during the EMA goes along with more creative achievements. (2) Higher creative ideation performance assessed in everyday life situations goes along with a higher creative potential (TCT-DP). (3) Higher creative potential goes along with more creative achievements. This pattern of findings would indicate the validity of creative ideation performance assessed in everyday life context by means of the interactive psychophysiological ambulatory assessment
Sequential Pricing
No full textSellers and buyers think and behave differently during transactions, such that they price the same product differently. We are interested in how their marginal utility varies differently as the quantity of products or the quantity of a product attribute changes
Longitudinal, comparative assessment of multiple regulatory strategies to promote healthy eating
No full textOverall, the aim of this study is to determine the efficacy of multiple regulatory strategies on daily eating patterns
Attachment and emotions in romantic relationships 2
No full textThe current study is a second study into the broader research question: if and to what extent are attachment orientations associated with the experience and the regulation of emotions in the romantic relationships? The first study included an online one-time questionnaire (for more details, see https://osf.io/jk9pd/). In this second study, we would like to see if we replicate the results from the first study using both online questionnaires and also momentary daily life measures (using experience sampling methodology, ESM)
Creating cognitive-behavioural associations among novel groups and behaviours II: Testing a Social Identity Model of Behavioural Associations (SIMBA)
No full textWith a focus on alcohol consumption and public health behaviour in relation to student and national identities, previous online and lab-based investigations of the Social Identity Model of Behavioural Associations (SIMBA)—a methodological and theoretical integration of both social and balanced identity theories—have supported the utility of the model for the measurement of self-group-behaviour associations. In particular, tests of the SIMBA have offered support for the balance-congruity principle—that the strength of any one link in a triad of associations can be predicted by the combined associative strength of the remaining two.
Going beyond purely correlational investigations of the SIMBA, our recent research has begun to test the key causal assumption of the model; that for a given association, surrounding associations are, at least in part, causally constitutive of it. As investigating this assumption requires the direct manipulation of model constructs, our research initially focused on uncovering the most suitable and effective methodology to use. Comparing partial-IAT and probabilistic learning manipulations (osf.io/p3j29; Study 1), we found both methodologies to be equivalent in their ability to create self-group-behaviour associations among novel concepts. Specifically, manipulation of the self-group (identity) and group-behaviour (group norm) constructs of the SIMBA successfully created a link between ‘self’ and ‘behaviour’ concepts (i.e., the shared first-order prediction). However, given the confounds associated with the interpretation of results pertaining to the partial-IAT methodology (i.e., common-method variance), our findings support the utility of probabilistic learning as the most appropriate means of creating novel associations (further supported by replication osf.io/p3j29; Study 2). The current research aims to provide additional insight into the longevity of the novel self-group-behaviour associations, and whether exposure to a ‘booster session’ of the probabilistic learning manipulation may be able to buffer, or strengthen, associative strength over time
Children's processing of written irony: An eye-tracking study
No full textThere are no previous studies on how children process written irony. What is known is that irony comprehension is an ability that starts to develop when children are around 5–6 years old (e.g., Dews et al., 1996). First, children start to understand that with irony speakers say something other than what they mean; in this early stage, it is sometimes misunderstood as a lie (Winner & Leekam, 1991). Children’s understanding of the ironic speaker’s intent begins to emerge later, around age 7 or 8, but irony comprehension and more sophisticated understanding of humour and teasing functions continue to develop until early adulthood (Pexman, Reggin, & Lee, 2019). In the present study, the objective is to examine how children process and comprehend written irony in comparison to adults. We will investigate 4th grade Finnish elementary school children (10-year-olds) and compare their comprehension and processing of irony to that of adults. Previously, it has been suggested that processing of written irony cannot be studied with children, because their reading skill is not fully developed (Nicholson, Whalen, & Pexman, 2013). However, Finnish children have high reading literacy (Mullis, Martin, Foy, & Hooper, 2017), and the reading performance of 10-year-olds is expected to be similar to adults for the reading of literal, non-ironic language, although children are expected to be generally slower (see Blythe & Joseph, 2011, for a review on reading development). Children should struggle in their irony comprehension (Capelli, Nakagawa, & Madden, 1990), which should be also seen in processing times
Evaluation of the effects of IBEM-U program among university students in Colombia
No full textAlcohol and other drugs abuse is a growing problem in Latin America, and Colombia has one of the highest populations of alcohol consumption among university students between 18 and 24 years of age (CICAD, 2019). The age at onset of alcohol consumption in our country is around 13 years, and when they start the university 20% of them abuse of alcohol and are dependent on it (UNODC, 2017). This population is particularly vulnerable to negative consequences of alcohol use and they seem not to be aware of the implications of this on their immediate goals. The preventive program IBEM-U (Brief Intervention based on Motivational Interviewing for University students) addresses this issue directly; this program was created by Corporación Nuevos Rumbos, firstly for adolescents aged 13 to 15 years with promising results, and because of the pandemic which made people to be in lockdown, this program had to migrate to an online one. The current version is aimed at decreasing past-month prevalence of consumption among young adults, aged 18 to 24 years. The goal of this proposal is to evaluate its effects on decreasing alcohol consumption in terms of quantity and frequency, including heavy episodic drinking. A cluster randomized control trial with person-level outcomes, and with repeated measures at six months after the implementation, will be carried out. The intervention and control group will be randomly assigned and will include approximately 3,000 students from three different universities in Colombia. The first phase includes the delivery of the program to the intervention group, where each student will receive two personalized online sessions on alcohol prevention lasting 15 minutes each, during a lapse of time of four months. In between, there will be a call or a message, reminding the self-imposed goal. The intervention itself will have two measurements (baseline (meeting 1)= time 0, meeting 2= time 1). A second measurement phase will be six months (time 2) after the last meeting with the participants, to explore if outcomes remain once the intervention has finished. The adaptation from face to face meetings to online sessions, and from underage to adult people, will also be part of the trial
Algorithmic Bias Perception Study 2
No full textThis is a follow-up experimental study, aiming to explore the effects of training sources and racial bias in AI performance on perceived algorithmic bias and users' trust in AI as well as the effect of user feedback on restoring users' trust in AI after a negatively violated experience