Tacit knowledge measured by a STJ and college student performace

What is it about?

It has been suggested that tacit knowledge may be a good predictor of performance in college. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which a situational judgment test developed to measure tacit knowledge correlates with predictors and indicators of college performance. This situational judgement test includes 8 situations relevant to the life of college (undergraduate) student and is comprised of 211 behavioural strategies. 448 college students participated in the study. The results of this study suggest that tacit knowledge has small, statistically non-significant correlations with cumulative GPA, the percentage of the academic requirements passed on the first attempt, cognitive abilities, achievement motivation, and attention. However, tacit knowledge was found to correlate moderately with the personality factor of agreeableness. The findings do not support claims about the importance of tacit knowledge in academic settings and question what tacit knowledge really is and if it is a useful construct for performance prediction.

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Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The idea of using a SJT to measure tacit knowledge is intriguing, especially because there are very few other tacit-knowledge measurement instruments described in the literature. Additionally, SJTs are reported to be valid predictors of job performance or a useful component of a selection battery to predict task performance . They are also well suited to measuring behaviors elicited by complex interpersonal and administrative situations and such situations are typical pro college study.

Perspectives