I__. - International Military Testing Association

Evaluation of the counseling nrocedure
For the time beeing, a long-term investigation concerning the validity is not yet available as the new
procedure exits only three years and soldiers have not held their posts in the units long enough to see
whether the counseling procedure has proved its worth.
However, a comparison of the different recruitment procedures of the NVRC and the IBA already
permits a stalement on the quality of the new procedure. In this case, NC0 training course results obtained
by soldiers that have been recruited for the Navy by NVRC and those recruited through IBA
can be compared.
It was to be expected that the results of the training course would not differ significantly as the
psychologists involved are the same in both cases, and they can make use of their many years’ experience
of test methodology.
However the results also confirm the application of uniform standards to both procedures.
A further confirmation of the new IBA procedure is the opinion poll about the personal involvement
and the acceptance of the new procedure of the IBA has the following results:
Out of 84 superiors only 3 officers had a negative or indifferent opinion about the new way IBA is
practised now.
The absolute figures of the results of the last years to be compared makes no sense because of the
decreasing number of applicant for volunteering in the Navy. But if you look at the relative frequencies
the new procedure succeeded. The percentage of the enlistment rate was in 1986 about 77.8 %. This
rate increased 1989 up to 90.4 %. The difference is statistically not significant. It means however to the
Navy that the absolute number of enlistments is nearly constant in the last years, though the total numbers
of applicants is reduced.
Conclusions:
I cannot judge whether this procedure designed to recruit suitable personnel for the Navy can also be
transferred to other Navies. According to the Naval Staff, this procedure has proved its worth in the
German Navy. The forces and their superiors themselves feel that they are more actively involved in
the process of recruiting and therefore they intensify their counseling efforts for individual applicants
thus acting as multipliers.
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