Measuring Social Privilege Attitudes Using a Situational Judgment Test: Validation of the Diversity Engagement Test (DivET)

White privilege is a popular social inequality research topic. However, current attitudinal questionnaires of White privilege are problematic given that the definition of White privilege presumes that the majority of Whites are unaware of their privileged status. The current study proposes that situational judgment tests offer an alternative assessment strategy. The Diversity Engagement Test DivET was based on the idea that rationalizations are ubiquitous when defending social privilege, and the argument that reactions to White privilege rationalizations are better indicators of attitudes about White privilege. The DivET was administered to both a student sample and a military sample, and initial results suggested that DivET scores generated acceptable evidence of reliability and validity, including internal structure, convergent validity, divergent validity, and criterion-related validity.