Why Some Situational Judgment Tests Fail To Predict Job Performance (and Others Succeed)

Situational judgment tests (SJTs) occasionally fail to predict job performance in criterion-related validation studies, often despite much effort to follow scholarly recipes for their development. This commentary provides some plausible explanations for why this may occur as well as some tips for SJT development. In most cases, we frame the issue from an implicit trait policy (ITP) perspective (Motowidlo, Hooper, & Jackson, 2006a, 2006b) and the measurement of general domain knowledge. In other instances, we believe that the issue does not have a direct tie to the ITP concept, but our experience suggests that the issue is of sufficient importance to include in this response. The first two issues involve challenges gathering validity evidence to support the use of SJTs, and the remaining issues deal more directly with SJT design considerations.