SITUATIONAL JUDGMENT TESTS, RESPONSE INSTRUCTIONS, AND VALIDITY: A META-ANALYSIS

Situational judgment tests (SJTs) are personnel selection instruments that present job applicants with work-related situations and possible responses to the situations. There are typically 2 types of instructions: behavioral tendency and knowledge. Behavioral tendency instructions ask respondents to identify how they would likely behave in a given situation. Knowledge instructions ask respondents to evaluate the effectiveness of possible responses to a given situation. Results showed that response instructions influenced the constructs measured by the tests. Tests with knowledge instructions had higher correlations with cognitive ability. Tests with behavioral tendency instructions showed higher correlations with personality constructs. Results also showed that response instructions had little moderating effect on criterion-related validity. Supplemental analyses showed that the moderating effect of response instructions on construct validity was not due to systematic differences in item content. SJTs have incremental validity over cognitive ability, the Big 5, and over a composite of cognitive ability and the Big 5.     

The mediating influence of interpersonal problems on the intergenerational transmission of relationship aggression

Intergenerational patterns of relationship aggression have received considerable theoretical attention and empirical support. A developmental account of such effects suggests that childhood exposure to family violence leads to interpersonal problems that are subsequently manifested in aggressive dating relationships. The current study tested this hypothesis using structural equation modeling with data from a sample of female college students (N= 207). The theoretical model of interest, in which interpersonal problems with dominance, intrusiveness, and vindictiveness fully mediate the link between violence in the family of origin and participation in physically aggressive dating relationships, provided a very good fit to the data. This mediational model was preferable to alternative models that (a) included both direct and indirect influences of family‐of‐origin violence, (b) reversed the direction of effects by modeling interpersonal problems with dominance as a result of intimate partner aggression; and (c) modeled interpersonal problems with submissiveness as mediating intergenerational violence patterns. The findings implicate interpersonal problems with dominance as an important mediating factor in the developmental pathway linking family‐of‐origin violence to intimate partner violence in adulthood for young adult women.     

The Dynamics of Unemployment for Social Assistance Recipients

In this exploratory research study, the experience of unemployment and helping or hindering factors for social assistance recipients is examined.     

Informed Consent and the Requirement to Ensure Understanding

It is generally held that doctors and researchers have an obligation to obtain informed consent. Over time there has been a move in relation to this obligation from a requirement to disclose information to a requirement to ensure that that information is understood. Whilst this change has been resisted, in this article I argue that both sides on this matter are mistaken. When investigating what information is needed for consent to be informed we might be trying to determine what information a person would need in order to consent at all, or we might be trying to determine what information a person needs in order to make an informed choice about whether or not to consent. I argue that the obligation to ensure understanding only applies to information generated by the first type of enquiry; but that much of the information generally thought necessary in order for consent to be informed is only required if our concern is with the second type of enquiry. For this reason it is neither the case that doctors and researchers should ensure all the information they provide is understood, nor is it the case that their only obligation is to disclose it.     

The Nature of Conversational Involvement and Nonverbal Encoding Patterns

Conversational involvement refers to the degree to which participants in a communicative exchange are cognitively and behaviorially engaged in the topic, relationship, and/or situation. It is argued that involvement should be viewed from a functional perspective and conceptualized as entailing fiue dimensions: immediacy, expressiveness, interaction management, altercentrism, and social anxiety. Specific nonverbal behaviors that are actually encoded to express involvement along these five dimensions are examined within an interview context. Unacquainted dyads (N=52) engaged in baseline interviews followed by a second interview in which one participant was asked to increase or decrease involvement significantly. Tiuentyone kinesic, proxemic, and vocalic behaviors were rated during five intervals. Change scores from baseline to manipulations shouted numerous differences between high and low involvement, as did correlations between magnitude of involvement and nonverbal behaviors. The behaviors that most strongly discriminated high from low involvement were general kinesic/proxemic attentiveness, forward lean, relaxed laughter, coordinated speech, fewer silences and latencies, and fewer object manipulations. Behaviors most predictive of magnitude of involvement change were facial animation, vocal warmth/interest, deeper pitch, less random movement, and more vocal attentiveness.