I__. - International Military Testing Association

The Practical Impact of Selecting TOW Gunners
with a Psychomotor Test
Amy Schwartz and Jay Silva
The U.S. Army Research Institute for the
Behavioral and Social Sciences
The ongoing reduction in defense forces has focused the
interest of Army management on how to maintain current deterrent
and combat power with fewer soldiers. One approach is to improve
the person-to-job match in entry positions. A better match may
lead to lowered attrition and better performance among those 'who
are selected. New selection tests, developed through the Army's
Project A (Campbell, 1990), have been shown to contribute
significantly to the prediction of training performance in a
variety of MOS (e.g., Busciglio, 1990; Busciglio, Silva & Walker,
1990). If these tests were used to classify recruits who have
been selected into a family of MOS, an increase in assignment
efficiency into specific MOS could result.
One application of a newly developed psychomotor test is the
prediction of 11H TOW (Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, &ireguided)
gunner performance. Currently, recruits are accessioned
into the generic MOS 11X (Infantryman) using the Combat (CO)
composite of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery
(ASVAB) . They are later classified into one of four Infantry MOS
including 11H TOW gunners. Previous research found that
psychomotor tests, especially one which required two-hand
tracking of a target (Two-hand Tracking test), accounted for a
significant amount of variance of simulated gunnery performance
beyond that explained by the ASVAB Combat composite for TOW
gunners (Silva, 1989).
The present analyses examined the practical benefits of
using scores on a psychomotor test to select TOW gunners. First,
the potential performance gains that can be accomplished with the
additional test were examined. However, performance gains for
11H's may result in decreases in the quality of recruits in the
remaining Infantry MOS. Determining the overall effect of
implementing the new test ideally would require criteria
performance data for all Infantry MOS. Since these data were not
available, the impact of the additional test was examined by
comparing general quality of recruits selected into the 11H MOS
with that of the remaining recruits who would be assigned to the
other MOS in the 11 series. Armed Forces Qualifications Test
(AFQT) scores, which are currently an accepted measure of
quality, were used for this comparison. Thus, the purpose of
this research is to demonstrate the contribution of Two-hand
Tracking to predicting TOW gunner performance, while considering
the general impact of implementing the new tests for
classification purposes.
256
.