The typical-performance emotional management test: Test-retest reliability and further validity evidence

Situational judgments tests (SJTs) offer many advantages over traditional trait questionnaires but often show low internal consistency, presumably due to heterogeneity of the assessed constructs (Lievens et al. 2008; Whetzel & McDaniel, 2009). Authors have suggested that test-retest-reliability (TRT) might be a better-suited measure for SJTs. Here, we analyzed TRT of the typical-performance emotional management test (TEMT, Freudenthaler & Neubauer, 2005) – and SJT for emotional management. We additionally report further and hitherto not analyzed validity evidence with respect to a maximum-performance emotional management SJT (STEM, MacCann & Roberts, 2008) and the widely used Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue, Petrides & Furnham, 2003). For a 2 week-interval, we found satisfying test-retest reliabilities for both scales of the TEMT (inter- and intrapersonal emotional management; .76 and .83, respectively). Intrapersonal ability correlated moderately to highly with all four TEIQue main factors and the total score, whereas interpersonal ability showed low to medium relations. Relations with the STEM were smaller. Our results support that SJTs can show good reliabilities – when assessed via TRT – and emphasize the importance to distinguish between typical- and maximum-performance tests of emotional abilities.