Content Validation of a Situational Judgment Test of Manager’s Integrity: A Qualitative Approach

Abstract

Leader’s integrity appears to be a significant predictor of their effectiveness (Moorman et al., 2012), however, little empirical evidence has been found to address this relationship. It may be due, partly, to unavailability of sound assessment tools in this area. Current research describes development and content validation of a situational judgement test to assess manager’s integrity that will have potential benefits over existing unidimensional and Likert-type perceptual measures (Becker, 2005; Craig & Gustafson, 1998; Mills & Boardley,  2017). Ten managers and 7 subordinates from multinational organizations were interviewd for generating context specific siatuations and associated responses. Initially, 31 situations and associated 6-7 responses were extracted from interviews. Two independent rounds of subject matter experts (SMEs) reviews resulted in 22 situations and 3-5 associated responses. Finally, 16 situations and 3-5 associated responses were retained after calculating item content validity index (I-CVI) and scale validity index (S-CVI). The resulting test, labeled the manager’s integrity-SJT, displayed high content validity. Thus, present study advances research in the field of leadership by developing a situational judgements test for assessing manager’s integrity towards their subordinates that is pertinent predictor of leadership effectiveness (Moorman, et al., 2012).