I__. - International Military Testing Association

Incrementing ASVAB Validity with
Spatial and Perceptual-Psychomotor Tests
Henry H. Busciglio
U. S. Army Research Institute
The Army's Project A is a long-term, comprehensive effort to
improve the selection and classification of enlisted personnel.
One objective of this effort was to develop and validate measures
of abilities other than the general cognitive domain covered by
the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), including
spatial, perceptual, and psychomotor abilities. Previous
analyses of Project A data (Campbell, 1988) showed that the ASVAH .'
is useful for predicting first tour performance. Therefore, the
ASVAB serves as a baseline against which the marginal utility of
other tests for selection and classification is judged. This
analysis of data collected during the 1985 Project A Concurrent
Validation attempted to answer three questions:
(1) How much of the variance in comprehensive performance
measures can spatial and perceptual-psychomotor tests account
for, over and above that predicted by ASVAB subtests?
(2) Is either type of test, spatial or perceptual-psychomotor,
more useful for incrementing ASVAB validity?
(3) Which specific Project A tests will make the highest
individual contributions to this incremental validity?
Subjects
Method
Subjects were first-term enlisted personnel in the nine MOS
for which hands-on criterion measures were collected as part of
the 1985 Concurrent Validation phase of Project A. The number of
subjects from each MOS, as well as the total sample size, is
shown in Table 1.
Predictors
Predictors were the nine ASVAB subtests, the six Project A
paper-and-pencil tests of spatial ability, and 14 selected scores
from the ten Project A computerized perceptual-psychomotor tests.
Table 2 presents a list of these predictors, along with the
specific perceptual-psychomotor scores used.
Presented at the meeting of the Military Testing
Association, November, 1990. All statements expressed in this
paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
Official opinions or policies of the U.S. Army Research Institute
or the Department of the Army.
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