Situational Judgement Tests for Canadian Police Applicants: What Is Actually Published

“Situational judgement test” is a common search, and many results describe formats no one has confirmed for Canadian police hiring. This page separates what is generally true of situational judgement tests from what the testing bodies themselves publish, and then shows how to reason through a scenario.

What a situational judgement test measures

General explanation, not specific to any Canadian police test. A situational judgement test (SJT) describes a realistic situation and asks what you would do, or which response is most appropriate. The idea is to see how you weigh competing considerations such as safety, rules, fairness and honesty, rather than to test recall of facts. Formats vary a great deal between tests, so do not assume one format applies to another.

Which Canadian police tests describe scenario-based questions

Only what the publishers say, as checked on 2026-09-23:

• OACP Certificate, Part B (SSPO). The 2026 SIGMA study guide says the Police Problem Solving section has 30 questions “based on scenarios relevant to police work,” each followed by multiple-choice questions that ask you to “identify the most appropriate response or course of action.” Situations may appear as paragraphs or a map, with four options each. The guide adds that the SSPO includes a penalty for incorrect answers and that unanswered questions are not penalized. See the OACP Certificate explained.
• RCMP Online Entrance Assessment. The preparatory guide lists six sections. None is described as situational or scenario-based. “Business reasoning” is described as verbal reasoning (word-pair relationships) and numerical reasoning (math word problems). The words “situation,” “scenario” and “judgement” do not appear on the page. See the RCMP Online Entrance Assessment.
• BC ETHOS exam. West Vancouver Police’s overview lists four modules: Memory & Observation, Reading Comprehension & Critical Thinking, Summary Skills, and Writing & Editing. It does not describe a situational judgement module. See the BC ETHOS assessment.

Scenario-based thinking also shows up in interviews. The RCMP’s Attribute Evaluation Interview is described as behavioural (past experiences), which is a different format; see the RCMP suitability interview page.

How to reason through a scenario

General approach, not a scoring key. A steady sequence helps under time pressure:

1. Safety first: who is at risk right now, including you and the public?
2. Limits of authority: what do law, policy and your role permit, and what do they not?
3. Information: what is known, what is assumed, and what can be confirmed quickly?
4. Escalation and support: who should be told, and is backup or supervision appropriate?
5. Honesty and accountability: does the option involve hiding, bending or overstating anything?
6. Proportion: is the response no larger or smaller than the situation needs?

An original worked example

Original ETHOS content. It is not from any real test, and real tests do not necessarily reason this way.

You are a new recruit on a work placement. A colleague you like mentions, casually, that they left an evidence bag unsealed and unattended overnight, and asks you not to mention it. Nothing appears to be missing. What is the most appropriate response?

One defensible line of reasoning: the question turns on honesty, the integrity of evidence, and your duty within the organization, not on whether anything was actually lost. Staying silent to protect a friend puts your own integrity at risk and leaves a possible continuity problem unrecorded. Confronting the colleague publicly, or reporting it with exaggeration, would be out of proportion. A measured option is to encourage the colleague to report it themselves promptly, and to tell your supervisor yourself if they do not, sticking to the facts. Reasonable people may weigh the sequence differently, and a real policy would decide it. The value is in being able to explain the reasoning, not in matching a single answer.

Common traps

• Hero answers: taking dramatic solo action when a measured step is available.
• Loyalty over integrity: letting friendship override honesty or policy.
• Assuming facts not given: answering the scenario you imagined, not the one written.
• Passive answers: doing nothing when the situation needs action or escalation.
• Ignoring the scoring rules: if your test penalizes wrong answers, as the SSPO guide says it does, read its instructions on unanswered questions before guessing.

Practise the reasoning

ETHOS Practice includes original Situational Judgment scenarios with educational feedback, each labelled as original ETHOS content and not an official test item. Open ETHOS Practice to try them. To turn your reasoning into spoken answers, read Structuring a Behavioural Answer and use Interview Lab.

What this article is not

This is general educational information. It contains no official or recalled test questions, makes no claim about how any test is scored beyond what its publisher states, and guarantees no outcome.