Examining the Predictive Validity of an Open-Response Situational Judgment Test with Typed-Response and Video-Response Items

Assessing the personal and professional skills alongside the academic ability of applicants is vital for holistic admissions practices. While these soft skills can be assessed via interviews, the time and resources required to conduct them mean that they are often impractical to offer to every applicant. Situational judgment tests (SJT), particularly open-response SJTs, offer a resource-friendly method for assessing these skills early in the admissions process prior to deciding who should interview. We explored the extent to which a new SJT format, an open-response SJT with both typed- and video-response items, could predict future interview performance using admissions data from 1,011 applicants to two US medical school programs. Correlation (r=0.37–0.48) and logistic regression results (OR = 1.668–2.595) indicate that the updated SJT format has an increased ability to predict future interview performance relative to the previous format which consisted solely of typed-response items.