Assessment of Situational Judgement (ASJ)

Description
The Assessment of Situational Judgement (ASJ) is a 17-item tool designed to assess scam susceptibility across different settings, including clinical, community, and financial contexts. The ASJ evaluates an individual’s ability to differentiate between scam and legitimate scenarios. It includes situations drawn from real scams reported by the Florida Division of Consumer Services, as well as benign legitimate situations that require careful judgment. The tool was developed with input from a pilot study and tested on a sample of adults recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. It uses a Likert scale to rate the likelihood of engaging in scam versus legitimate scenarios.

Author(s)

• Getz, Sarah J.
• Levin, Bonnie E.
• Galvin, James E.

Purpose
The ASJ aims to measure the recognition of scams and legitimate requests in a decision-making context. It is specifically designed to assess how well older adults can discern scamming scenarios from legitimate ones in various forms (online, in-person, telephone).

Instrument Type

• Vignette/Scenario

Construct

• Scam Susceptibility

Reliability

• Internal Consistency: The ASJ demonstrates high internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha of 0.98 for the Scam factor and 0.73 for the Legitimate factor.

Validity

• Group Validity: Validity was assessed using group comparisons based on sociodemographic data, computer/social media use, and prior exposure to scams. Results indicated that the ASJ effectively differentiates between those at higher or lower risk for scamming.
• Sensitivity/Specificity: Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses yielded an AUC of 0.790 for the Scam factor, 0.730 for the Legitimate factor, and 0.767 for the Scam/Legitimate ratio, with optimal cut-off scores determined for each.
• Factor Analysis: Factor analysis revealed that the Scam factor explained 50.6% of the variance, while the Legitimate factor explained 10.6%.

Test Methodology

• Test Validity
• Test Reliability
• Internal Consistency
• Factor Analysis
• Test Sensitivity
• Test Specificity

Test Year

• 2024

Language

• English

Format

• Items are rated on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = extremely unlikely to 7 = extremely likely). Scores for the Scam and Legitimate factors are computed by averaging responses across items.

Administration Method

• Electronic

Number of Items

• 17 items

Factors and Subscales

• Scam Scenarios
• Legitimate Scenarios

Items of the Assessment of Situational Judgement (ASJ)

• Scam items
• Legitimate items

Reference
Getz, S. J., Levin, B. E., & Galvin, J. E. (2024). The Assessment of Situational Judgment questionnaire: A novel instrument to detect susceptibility to financial scamming. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 97(3), 1365–1379. https://doi.org/10.3233/JAD-231194