Measuring Appraisals and Coping With Situational Judgment Tests

• In Event: Situational Judgment Tests: Assessing Workforce Readiness

Abstract

Coping with the stress of academic life is one of the key challenges that college students face, and has been linked with outcomes such as GPA and student wellbeing. Transactional models of stress and coping suggest that the coping strategy an individual uses in a given situation is based on their appraisals of the stressor. In particular, appraisals of high controllability are linked with problem-focused coping whereas appraisals of low controllability are linked with emotion-focused or avoidant coping. Using situational judgment tests (SJTs) to assess coping enables the measurement of situational appraisals as well as typical coping styles. SJTs may thus be a useful tool for researching appraisals as well as assessing an individual’s typical coping tendencies. It is hypothesized that controllability appraisal tendencies will be linked with tendencies to use more problem-focused coping and less avoidant and emotion-focused coping. It is also expected that appraisal tendencies will predict student levels of depression, anxiety and stress, but that this would be mediated by the coping mechanisms students used.

The study examined 152 first year Australian university students. Students completed a 1.5 hour computerized test battery as part of their undergraduate course. This battery included: (a) a 6-item SJT assessing problem-focused, emotion-focused and avoidant coping, including appraisals of the controllability of each situation; (b) a standard rating scale assessment of coping; (c) the six-factor HEXACO personality assessment; (d) an analogical reasoning assessment, and (d) outcome measures of student depression, anxiety, and stress.

As expected, appraisals of controllability were related to typical coping styles as measured by both the SJT and the rating scale. Controllability appraisals from the SJT predicted: (a) significantly higher problem-focused and lower emotion-focused coping on both SJT and rating scales, and (b) significantly lower avoidant coping on the SJT only. SJT and rating scale assessments of coping mechanisms significantly predicted anxiety, depression, and stress.

Hierarchical regressions were run to predict students’ levels of anxiety, depression and stress from intelligence (step 1), personality (step 2), controllability appraisals (step 3) and coping (step 4). All three of stress, anxiety, and depression, controllability appraisals were significant at step 3, but not at step 4. This was the case for SJT measures of coping as well as the rating-scale measures of coping. That is, coping fully mediated the relationship between controllability appraisals and emotional outcomes.
Results support the idea that consistent individual differences may be involved in theoretical models of coping: Students who appraise events as uncontrollable are more likely to experience anxiety, depression and stress, but this can be explained by the greater tendencies to use emotion-focused and avoidant coping, and less likelihood of using problem-focused coping. Results highlight a potentially useful feature of SJTs: It is possible to assess both situational appraisals and situational judgments using the same set of items. It is thus possible to identify and study the theoretical antecedents of coping styles.

Author

• Carolyn Elizabeth MacCann, The University of Sydney