Criterion Validation of a Teamwork Situation Judgement Test

Abstract

The demand for agile and effective teams has grown considerably for the past few decades. New tools are necessary to help form and develop efficient and high performing teams. Choosing team members based on their assessed level of teamwork is one common approach for successful team staffing. This study was aimed at adding criterion validation to a previously developed and validated teamwork measure, the Teamwork Situational Judgement Test (Teamwork SJT). The Teamwork SJT, along with the Teamwork Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities test (Teamwork KSA) as a comparison measure, was given to participants (n = 143) from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The criterion was individual teamwork performance, measured by a behavioral rating scale and the Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME). Results show that the Teamwork SJT can predict individual levels of performance better than the comparison measure. Successful validation of the Teamwork SJT means that a practical selection and development tool would be available to both organizations and researchers who are interested in teamwork. Other uses for staffing, or even more general human resource areas, would also benefit from a tool such as this one.