I__. - International Military Testing Association

After the new construct structure was delineated, each PEC item was assigned to a construct/scale
according to its factor loadings and item content. Items that did not fit well into any construct were
placed in a “Miscellaneous” category. Item-total correlations were then computed for these revised construct
scales, and these were used to help guide decisions concerning which items to retain m the final
(shortened) PEC.
The final step in the present research was to shorten and refine the PEC. Decisions concerning
which items to drop took into account the pilot test results, the comparison sample results, the retranslation
results, and the item content. A few promising items were retained that did not fit welI into any of
the predictor constructs and placed in a “Miscellaneous” category. A total of thirty-two content scale
items were dropped. In addition, several of the Unlikely Virtues scale items were revised or replaced
based on results from the comparison and pilot sample data analyses.
The final (shortened) version of the PEC contains 116 items distributed across the final construct
scales as shown in Table 1, Table 1 also presents descriptive statistics for these scales. All of the scales
except Dependability have very good internal consistency reliability. The internal consistency of the
Dependability scale is comparatively low, and the mean score on this scale is also quite high in the applicant
sample. This scale was retained for further study in spite of these problems because, based on the
literature review, it is expected to predict attrition. Descriptive statistics are not reported on Table 1 for
the final Unlikely Virtues scale, because this scale contains new and revised items. Table 2 presents the
intercorn3lations among these final construct scale scores.
Achievement Motivation (AM)
Table 2
Scale Intercorrelations for the Final (Shortened) PEC Scales
Dependability (DP) .56
Social Comfort (SC) .32 .I8
Dominance (DM) .42 .29 .47
AM DP SC DM LO NR OP
Leadership Orientation (LO) A4 .28 .42 .56
NROTC/Military Interest and Motivation (NR) .42 .35 .25 .33 .31
Organization and Planning (OP) -58 -42 .19 .27 .31 .34
Unlikely Virtues (XIV) l .45 .30 .25 .33 .25 .35 .33
NOW Ns range from 962 to 964.
l Sum of 7 idned items.
502