Performance Assessment for the Workplace Volume I (1991) / Chapter Skim
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2. Policy Goals and Testing
2. Policy Goals and Testing
Pages 31-55
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From page 31... ...
Moreover, the institutional context in which military planners operate is rather more complex than most, and the scale of operations is certainly larger than most. Most important, the military mission is unique: in order to protect the national security, military personnel are entrusted with the means and social permission to use violence, one consequence of which is that the military has much greater legitimate control over the lives of its personnel than do civilian employers.
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From page 32... ...
It looks at the impact of legal and regulatory constraints on enlistment standards; the influence of demographic and economic factors on the supply of recruits; the complicated interplay among military quality requirements, manpower supply, and cutoff scores on aptitude tests; and, not least important, the influence of manpower policy goals such as racial and ethnic integration on the recruitment, selection, and classification system. SELECTION AND TRAINING GOALS The official statement of military manpower policy calls for the Services to have the plans, programs, and resources to provide trained manpower to meet the demands of global conventional war (U.S.
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From page 33... ...
Congress now has great, and sometimes definitive, influence on what to buy and who to buy it from; the specific size of each Service; the ratio of officers to enlisted personnel; entrance requirements for enlisted personnel; and the way DoD should be organized. Annual budget deliberations and periodic authorization hearings have become important settings for the discussion of military manpower policy.
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From page 34... ...
A candidate who qualifies for entry and who wants to enlist must still qualify for a particular job. Each military occupational specialty has its own special aptitude requirements that have been established on the basis of past experience to reject those who are poor risks to complete technical training without discouraging the better prospects.
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From page 35... ...
Service classifiers are aided by computer programs that follow complex algorithms for allocating people to jobs. The heart of each Service's computerized allocation system is a nationwide data base linking all 68 MEPS into one interactive information bank that registers, for each occupational specialty, the number of slots or billets earmarked for that specialty, the rate at which the slots are being filled in the current recruiting period, the places available in the relevant technical training school, the aptitude scores required for the job, and other information relevant to placement decisions.
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From page 36... ...
Proponents are also the major advocates for the entrance standards that are set for the jobs under their leadership. Demographic Trends in the Youth Population With the passage of the post-World War II baby boom generation into middle age, the cohort of 18- to 24-year-old males from which the military draws the vast majority of its recruits is on a significant downward slope.
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From page 37... ...
prohibited from serving in combat posit~ons. The Army response to the congressional committee's concern about the increasingly competitive recruiting environment due to the declining youth population was to emphasize the importance of cash enlistment bonuses, educational incentives and Army College Fund Programs, and competitive compensation in order to attract and retain high-quality enlisters.
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From page 38... ...
At the same time, the effects of recession and the budget deficit that are affecting government spending more generally will also require severe cuts in the defense budget, and more specifically in recruiting resources. Downsizing of the force, reduced budgets for advertising and recruiting, base closings, possible involuntary separations all these conditions affect the recruiting environment and thus create uncertainties for military human resource planners.
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From page 39... ...
Colonel 0.9 5.1 4.9 4.4 Major 2.5 5.1 4.4 6.8 Captain 5.2 3.7 7.5 12.7 1st Lieutenant 4.3 2.9 10.2 14.4 2nd Lieutenant 2.3 2.5 10.4 11.4 Total 3.2 3.9 7.2 10.4 Enlisted Personnel Sergeant Major 2.9 7.0 20.5 30.9 Master Sergeant 5.5 14.0 25.3 24.4 Sergeant 1st Class 7.8 19.6 24.7 25.5 Staff Sergeant 12.7 23.9 23.9 35.7 Sergeant 15.7 16.6 31.2 36.0 Specialist 4 13.0 13.5 37.2 29.9 Private 1st Class 10.8 15.9 39.0 23.6 Private 13.3 17.9 37.0 22.2 Recruit 11.4 18.3 27.0 22.8 Total 12.3 17.0 32.5 29.6 SOURCE: Moskos and Butler (1987:27)
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From page 40... ...
The pattern of change is generally in an upward direction, although there has been little or no change in the proportion of enlisted blacks in the Air Force since 1982 or in the Marine Corps since 1986. The success of the military's equal opportunity policies and the general attractiveness of the military as an employer to blacks and other racial minorities is indicated by comparisons with the civilian labor force.
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From page 41... ...
If military accession policy has shown real progress with regard to the participation of American minorities, classification policy goals have been more difficult to achieve. The distribution of minorities and women across the spectrum of military career fields has tended to be skewed away from the highly technical jobs.
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From page 42... ...
42 PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT FOR THE WORKPLACE TABLE 2-3 Occupational Areas of Active Duty Enlisted Personnel (percentage in each area) , Fiscal 1973 and 1989 Total Enlisted Occupational Women Blacks Personnel Area Fiscal 1973 Fiscal 1989 Fiscal 1973 Fiscal 1989 Fiscal 1989 Infantry, Gun Crews, and Seamanship Specialists *
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From page 43... ...
The proportion of blacks in the high-skill jobs also grew substantially, from 9 to 19 percent, although the proportion of whites is also quite a bit higher at 26 percent. Although the 1989 figures appear encouraging, the distribution of minorities and women across military career fields has been and will no doubt continue to be a sensitive policy issue for military human resource managers to deal with.
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From page 44... ...
An obvious consequence is that lower-scoring social groups will be screened out in greater proportions than their higher-scoring peer groups, all things being equal; of those who meet the operational enlistment standards, a larger proportion of recruits from the lower-scoring minority groups will be allocated to those jobs with less stringent entry requirements. The number of strategies that military planners might adopt to address the problem is fairly limited, and each has cost implications.
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From page 45... ...
THE ROLE OF TESTING To human resource managers in the military, aptitude tests are an attractive gauge of applicant potential for a variety of reasons: the lack of other indicators in its relatively young and inexperienced target population, the large number of jobs that need to be filled, and the need, in wartime, to bring large numbers of men and women in and up to battle readiness in as little time as possible. No matter what the method of assessing job appli
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From page 46... ...
The Evolution of Mental Aptitude Screening in the Military The history of testing in the military is a story of constant fluctuations in enlistment standards in response to changes in the recruiting environment. As recounted in Chapter 1, the use of psychological tests in the classification and assignment of military personnel can be traced, historically, to the Alpha and Beta tests administered to recruits and draftees at Army training camps during World War I
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From page 47... ...
In 1951, in the face of a possible depletion of the Selective Service manpower pool, the Congress—in enacting an amended draft law (the Universal Military Training and Service Act of 1951) adopted a number of measures to stretch the available draft manpower pool, including a reduction of the cutoff score on the AFQT from a percentile score of 13 to 10.
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From page 48... ...
were also required to qualify on supplemental aptitude test batteries previously administered only following entry into service. In addition, higher mental test scores were prescribed for non-high school graduates than for applicants with high school diplomas, based on considerable research evidence that the former were much poorer risks, in terms of disciplinary problems and other difficulties leading to premature discharge from service.
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From page 49... ...
It soon became common practice for the Services to fine-tune their standards to changing recruiting conditions, with operational cutoff scores being modified on a month-to-month basis, in combination with changing quotas for high school and non-high school graduates. As a consequence, the de facto enlistment standards during favorable recruiting periods and the 1980s were very favorable indeed have tended to be much higher than the official minimum standards.
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From page 50... ...
to assess the vocational aptitudes of a nationally representative sample of young people and to develop current norms for the ASVAB. Subsequent forms of the ASVAB have been calibrated to this 1980 youth population, making it the only vocational aptitude battery with nationally representative norms.
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From page 51... ...
POLICY GOALS AND TESTING TABLE 2-4 Current ASVAB Composites Used for Classification by the Services 51 Army Navy Marine Corps Air Force Component Subtests General General AR + WK +PC Technical General Technical Electronics Electronics Electronics Electronics Repair AR + WK + PC + MC AR + GS + MK + EI Clerical AR + MK + WK + PC Clerical Administrative NO + WK + PC + CS — Clerical MK + WK + PC + CS Motor NO + AS + MC + EI Maintenance - Mechanical AS + WK + PC + MC Mechanical AR + AS + MC + EI Maintenance — Mechanical GS + 2AS + MC Combat - AR + CS + AS + MC Field AR + CS + MK + MC Artillery Operators/ NO + WK + PC + MC + AS Food Surveillance/ AR + AS + MC + WK + PC Communications Basic AR + GS + 2MK Electricity/ Electronics Skilled GS + WK + PC + MC + MK Technical Engineering AS + MK Continued on next page
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From page 52... ...
In 1981, for example, the cohort entering military service scored somewhat higher on the AFQT composite than did the norming sample representative of the general youth population. ENLISTMENT STANDARDS AND QUALITY GOALS The Contemporary System As presently structured, the operation of the military recruitment, selection, and classification system takes place within the parameters defined by enlistment standards and quality goals.
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From page 53... ...
Recruits with scores in Categories I through IIIA that is, at the 50th percentile and above, are considered to be "high quality." The current enlistment standards and quality goals imposed by Congress for the entire armed forces are as follows. The legislated minimum enlistment standard for high school graduates is an AFQT score of 10; in other words, those with scores in Category V are not eligible for military service.
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From page 54... ...
Recruiters report how successful they have been in meeting recruiting quality goals. The entire process of monitoring, reporting, and negotiation is overseen by Service headquarters accession policy staff, who make the final decisions about formal enlistment standards.
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From page 55... ...
As the decade progressed, Congress became increasingly insistent in asking: How much quality is enough? DoD launched the Joint-Service Job Performance Measurement/Enlistment Standards Project to provide the data base and the methodologies necessary to provide more explicit, scientifically defensible answers to that question.
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