2003 IMTA Proceedings - International Military Testing Association

CLASSIFICATION OF DUTIES INTO NEW SPECIALTIES
A first step in new specialties system was to define branches and services at the
Armed Forces level, and to define specialties within each individual branch and service. This
was executed without previous empirical studies, in view of the brief term allowed for
development of the new system.
Inventory of branches and services was agreed at the senior authorities level, and was
mostly based on the existing system and planned reforms. This was followed by appointing of
a Commission authorised for proposing the changes to the inventory and entrusted with coordination
of the new specialties system. The Commission designated an expert per each
branch and service, mostly an experienced and a respectable officer in the branch/service,
who was then tasked with preparing a new inventory of specialties for the respective
branch/service. He was encouraged to consult other experts of the branch. His “pool” also
included a psychologist and a physician, who were counted on to do job analysis at his
request in possibly vague situations and radical changes, to enable decision-making.
While for some of the branches the job was performed in a short term and univocally,
for others it took quite a long time. It was mostly the case with new duties. Prior to decision
on specialties structure additional clarifications were requested that regarded the projected
scope, content and modality of operation. Again, as the debate on how to organise new
domains may take some time and includes a number of subjects, the job is still not finished
for some domains.
ENTRY CRITERIA-REQUIRED JOB ANALYSES
The new specialties structure defined, job analysis was conducted for each considered
specialty.
Analysis objective
The objective of analysis was to define entry criteria (psychological, physical and
medical) that the candidates for a respective specialty are expected to meet.
Analysis modality
As mentioned above, each branch/service was assigned a task group made up of the
respective branch/service leader-expert, a psychologist and a physician – all of them, as a rule,
with a lengthy service in the branch/service and the experience with the duties analysed.
The analysis was based on the quantitative and the qualitative processing of data
compiled by means of a questionnaire administered on a group of experts.
Military psychologists were tasked with the questionnaire administration and
quantitative analysis of the results. The final step was then qualitative analysis of the data,
which was done by all the members of the group, and drafting of a final report.
Questionnaire
In job analysis the adapted and previously tested version of questionnaire – the
”VSSp-1” was used, employed previously for the purposes of the kind. It combines the
psychological, the physical and the medical aspects of duties. In addition to basic data (bio
data, unit, date) the questionnaire includes the following units:
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45 th Annual Conference of the International Military Testing Association
Pensacola, Florida, 3-6 November 2003