Incremental Validity Of New Tests In Prediction Of Infantry Performance PDF Download

This research evaluates the utility of new Army tests of spatial, perceptual, and psychomotor abilities developed under the Army's Project A (improving the Selection, Classification, and Utilization of Army Enlisted Personnel). Utility is judged in terms of incremental validity over the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). The analyses are stepwise regressions using predictors and performance tests form the 1985 Concurrent Validation of Project A.A variety of performance measures, ranging from comprehensive to task-level, served as criteria for the analyses. In the analyses, optimal combinations of Project A predictors substantially augmented the proportion of criterion variance explained by optimal combinations of ASVAB scores alone, particularly for such comprehensive measures as General Soldiering Proficiency and the combined score on written tests of school and job knowledge. In certain Military Occupational Specialties (MOS), Project A scores led to increments in the predictability of more specific criteria, such as Target Identification and Navigation. While no strong support was found for the relative superiority of spatial versus perceptual-psychomotor scores, there was evidence that some individual tests (viz., Assembling Objects, Figural Reasoning, and Target Identification) were more useful than others as incremental predictors of the criteria. Because of the concurrent design used and the lack of opportunities for cross-validation, these generally favorable findings only the suggest the results to be expected from the Longitudinal Validation of Project A.