Applications of High-Stakes Rich-Media Simulations

Abstract

Job simulations have proven to be powerful tools for measuring a broad range of competencies; however, organizations are often reluctant to administer these types of assessments given the cost, time, and personnel required to develop and implement the measures. Given these constraints, organizations have taken the principles of job simulations a step further by using animation or video (i.e., rich media) to create interactive, online assessments that incorporate branching technology to facilitate realism. This chapter describes this novel approach and addresses how to handle the measurement challenges with sufficient rigor so that high-stakes personnel decisions can be made based on the resulting scores. Although additional research is needed to clearly understand these new innovative assessments, the initial psychometric properties and validity results offer strong support for these measures.