Technical b r Report - International Military Testing Association

DEXEtOPHEX~ OF THE ARNED SERVICES
VOCATIONAL APTITUDE BATTERY i
W. A. Fischl, Ph.D.
U. S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences
.
The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) is the test
battery administered in the joint services high school testing program.
In this program the services offer to administer a battery of vocational
aptitude tests in any high school that requests it. Trained test adminis-
trators visit the school and administer the battery,.the tests are scored
centrally, and results are returned to the high school guidance counselor
for transmittal to the student. This program is provided to high schools
that request it, at no charge either to the school or to the student.
Identification of Content
The tests employed in this program were devclop.ed to be a set of
. short alternate forms of the common elements of classification test batteries
in use by the services. At the tine of the original development each of the
servjcss was administering a classification battery of nine or ten aptitude
tests. To identify- the.cozmon content material of these batteries, the batter-
its of the Army, Navy, and Air Force were administered to a national sample of
3900 enlisted men during their first few days of service. Each enlisted man
took the tests of all three batteries, in a counterbalanced sequence, one
hattcry a day, over a several day period. The sample was subjected to statisti-
cal adjustment to equate for diffcrenccs in screening methods and acceptance
standards among the services, and the test scores were intercorrclatcd
to determine which test content areas were sufficiently sinilar as
to comprise the core of a joint test battery. The criterion of similarity
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