2003 IMTA Proceedings - International Military Testing Association

y members of the occupational field being studied (Thew and Weismuller, 1979)”. It is
designed to furnish users with a wide variety of reports that facilitate the identification of
individual and group characteristics and the detection of job similarities and differences. For
over 35 years, AFOMS has analyzed career fields and provided occupational data to Air Force
managers for use in decision-making. The analysis of work performed within career fields and
the demographic characteristics of the members performing this work has remained the
stronghold for objective and quantitative occupational data for managers to use for personnel and
training decisions for years.
These researchers will apply a currently available but seldom used CODAP analysis
program. This less common approach defines work by grouping tasks into TMs. With these
TMs, natural groupings of performance tasks can be provided to SMEs TDY to AFOMS. These
teams will compare the tasks organized by co-performance (TM extract) with SKT extract data
organized by major duty area and sorted by PMP, FVTI, or PTI index scores. It is the opinion of
these researchers that organizing performance data into meaningful groups (i.e., TMs) will
greatly aid in alleviating some of the concerns and the problems SMEs have with using typical
SKT extract data and will allow SMEs to make a more intuitive leap from performance-based
tasks to knowledge-based test questions.
Co-Performance
The idea of grouping tasks, by co-performance, into TMs has been discussed within the
research arena since the mid 1980s. For example, the Training Decisions System (TDS) was
conceived as a computer-based training requirements planning and decision support system
developed to meet Air Force needs for better decision information (Vaughan, Mitchell, Yadrick,
Perrin, Knight, Eschenbrenner, Rueter and Fledsott, 1989). The TDS allows managers and
analysts to evaluate policy options in terms of costs and training capacities of representative units
and to conduct trade-off analyses between various formal training programs and on-the-job
training (Mitchell, Knight, Budkenmeyer, and Hand, 1989). The TDS supports Air Force
managers in making decisions as to the what, where, and when of technical training (Ruck, 1982)
by using AFS-specific occupational survey task data as a starting point for training development
decisions. Task clustering is used in the TDS to capture the economies of training different tasks
at the same time, either because of common skills and knowledge, including perhaps shared
equipment, or because the tasks are generally performed by the same people.
AFOMS analysts have played an integral part in providing task data to support these
training systems since the inception of the program. Task modular data was a critical source of
information for program functionality.
Occupational Data for SKT Development
Of particular importance to SKT teams is a specially compiled SKT extract containing
occupational survey data specific to test populations. AFOMS survey data provides test writers
(SMEs) with PTI index scores that are derived from PMP, PTS, task difficulty (TD), and training
emphasis (TE) data. Those tasks rated highest in FVTI or PTI also tend to be high in all four of
the primary indices (PMP, PTS, TD and TE), and are exactly the kinds of tasks one would
generally consider job-essential and therefore appropriate for SKT content.
45 th Annual Conference of the International Military Testing Association
Pensacola, Florida, 3-6 November 2003
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