I__. - International Military Testing Association

2. Identifying The Problem
2.1. Screening Methods Used Ry Aviation .Psychologists
The need to screen pilot candidates is undisputed; screening does
not only serve the purpose of making the training cbst-effective,
it also intends to save unsuitable applicants from having to abort
a career. The problem of choosing suitable applicants seems to be _
an easy task for the practitioner in psychology, as he can choose
freely from a plenitude of psychological methods that have been
accumulated by two generations of psychologists having done
exstensive research in this particular area. On looking more
closely at the existing litera,ture, however, he will discover the
following: the best achievements made so far are validation
coefficients that lie with r=. 5 in the most favorable cases!
For the selection of applicants this means that he has to apply
the most uncompromising cut-off-scores if he wants to satisfy the
management with less than 10 % of candidates who have to be washed
out from pilot training. It is obvious that such an approach would
be synonymous with a sharp increase in the percentage of
mistakenly rejected candidates, which is totally unacceptable
unless one can draw on a large number of applicants. The latter is
not the case in German army aviation. This means that the
conventional testing methods are exhausted. Now that the old test
methods have been modified and renamed over decades it is hard to
imagine the occurance of a major breakthrough to yield validation
coefficients that are clearly above r=.5 .
2.2. Pilot Training
The contribution aviation psychology has made to pilot training is
in fact very small when one looks at the contributions made in the
field of pilot candidate selection. There is not much point in
taking enormous pains to choose student pilots and then abandon
them to their fates. In the German Army Aviation Branch, the
psychologist will look after every student pilot who gets into
trouble in the course of flight training. This approach has hel.ped
to gain the following experiences:
Problems resulted from
- flight instructors being unable to establish a personal
relationship with the student
- vague learning objectives which were not clearly understood by
students and interpreted differently among instructors
- inconsistent teaching methods
- the structure of the training program being based on a too
demanding learning progression and paying no attentiorl to
student's individual training needs and learning speeds.
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