Sixty Years of U.S. Army Selection and Classification Test Development

1
Sixty Years of U.S. Army Selection and
Classification Test Development

• Paul A. Gade, Ph.D.
• Nicole M. Dudley, M.A.
• U.S. Army Research Institute
• for the Behavioral and Social Sciences
• gade_at_ari.army.mil

2
Selection and Classification WWII through the
Vietnam War

• 1940 - Army General Classification Test (AGCT).
• During WWII, the AGCT was used successfully to
  classify more than 12,000,000 soldiers and
  marines for specialty and officer training.
• 1940s - Army Aptitude Area System for
  differential classification
• Began efforts to determine the combinations of
  valid tests for different Army Military
  Occupational Specialties (MOS) organization of
  specific aptitude tests into Army Aptitude Area
  System for differential classification was major
  innovation for military personnel system.
• 1950 - Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT).
• 1st selection instrument to be used for the
  uniform mental screening of recruits and
  inductees across the services.
• Used to determine mental qualifications of
  recruits during the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
• Currently used as general screening score by the
  Army and the other Services.

3
Selection and Classification The All-Volunteer
Force (AVF), Project A, Career Force

• 1976 - Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery
  (ASVAB) following transition to AVF.
• Joint Service test used from 1976 to now as
  primary tool for classifying soldiers.
• 1976-1980 - Inadvertent misnorming of ASVAB
• Congress issued Joint-Service Job Performance
  Measurement/Enlistment Standard (JPM) mandate.
• 1982-1995 - Project A Career Force
• Project A went well beyond mandate to validate
  ASVAB.
• Validation of ASVAB to predict job performance
  as well as validation of various new predictors
  (e.g., personality). Birth of classic prediction
  model.
• Identified five core dimensions of job
  performance Can Do technical, job
  proficiency, general soldiering proficiency, and
  Will Do effort and leadership, personal
  discipline, and physical fitness bearing .
• Measured more than 60,000 soldiers in 21
  Military Occupational Specialty (MOS), included
  concurrent and longitudinal validation samples.

4
Selection and Classification Project B and the
Enlisted Personnel Allocation System (EPAS)

• Early work by Hubert Brogden on differential
  assignment theory set stage for Project B and its
  successor, EPAS.
• 1982- Project B
• Initiated at same time as Project A
• Goal to develop computerized job assignment
  system that would optimize initial job
  assignments to put most qualified applicants in
  Army jobs likely available for the next year.
• Enlisted Personnel Allocation System (EPAS)
• Uses goal programming that incorporates Aptitude
  Area scores, projected training set availability,
  and projected availability of applicants to make
  near optimal job assignments.
• Research since late 1980s demonstrates that
  EPAS can indeed enhance assignment optimization
  for an annual recruit cohort, given Army
  enlistment requirements.

5
Selection and Classification Recruiter Selection

• 1982 Recruiter assessment center developed
• Originally developed to help select recruiters
  prior to training in the Army Recruiter Course.
• Turned into recruiter development center to
  provide untrained recruiters with diagnostic
  preview of tasks would do in the Army Recruiter
  Course to help new recruiters adjust to the job
  and to maximize training benefits.
• Perhaps the first use of assessment center as a
  training diagnostic.

6
Selection and Classification Computerized
Adaptive Testing (CAT)

• Forerunners of adaptive testing
• Abraham Bayroffs early work on branching tests
  largely unrecognized until work of Jim McBride at
  ARI on adaptive mental testing.
• Navy Personnel Research and Development Center
  (NPRDC) ARI pioneers
• NPRDC developed CAT-ASVAB which paved way for
  practical application of adaptive testing and
  Item Response Theory (IRT)
• Computerized Adaptive Screening Test (CAST)
• First widespread practical application of CAT.
• Developed for ARI by NPRDC based on items and
  testing strategies from early CAT-ASVAB work.
• CAST used in Army recruiting stations to screen
  applicants.
• CAST provide quick, valid estimator of AFQT
  portion of ASVAB.
• Also gave recruiting advertisers new way to
  assess effectiveness of advertising targeted to
  population likely to be eligible for military
  service.

7
Selection and Classification New Directions

• Future-oriented selection (e.g., Select21, NCO21)
• Performance measurement (e.g., Perform M21)
• Zeidner and colleagues work on differential
  classification
• Development of a faking-resistant temperament
  measure, the Assessment of Individual Motivation
  (AIM Young Whites research)
• Robert Sternbergs triarchic theory of successful
  intelligence
• Tacit Knowledge of Military Leaders (TKML)
  Inventory. TKML measures practical, largely
  unarticulated, procedural knowledge about
  leadership, different from g, experience, and
  personality.
• Early success demonstrated using tacit knowledge
  in training programs to accelerate leader
  development process. Now looking at measuring
  adaptability and flexibility via creative
  intelligence.
• Emotional intelligence measurement (potential
  classification device)
• Peter Legrees work on the properties and utility
  of consensus based measurement in situational
  judgment tests.
• Conditional reasoning methodology (potential
  selection tool)