I__. - International Military Testing Association

The goal for the CVAL system was to reduce the risk of personnel security incidents and
improve the ability of Detachment Commanders to anticipate personnel problems before
they became major disruptions. Thus, there was some emphasis on being able to use
CVAL as a kind of warning system, one which would indicate when there was a need to
intervene, either with informal counseling or disciplinary action short of judicial punishment.
In this context, then, there were several ancillary objectives for the development of
CVAL: (1) to provide an early warning indicator, with suggestions for intervention; (2)
to provide a leadership, counseling, and training tool for Detachment Commanders; and
(3) to minimize personnel turbulence and facilitate/document personnel decisions made
concerning the reliability of MSGs.
Method of Development
General Orientation. It was felt&om the outset that some kind of behavioral checklist
would be an appropriate format for the cornerstone of CVAL. In a recent review of
personnel reliability programs (Bosshardt, DuBois, and Crawford, 1990), the need was
pointed out for more careful definition of the factors that may indicate an individual has
become a security risk. In the current project, we wanted to produce a checklist of
observable behaviors that could indicate when an MSG’s performance was beginning to
exhibit signs of unreliability. This checklist could then be completed by the Detachment
Commander on a regular basis for each MSG, and appropriate action taken.
Sources of Information. The primary source of information for the development of a
CVAL checklist was the huge collection of written examples of MSG
performance/behavior generated in a prior phase of this research effort. These performance
examples were used in the prior research to develop behaviorally-anchored rating
scales that could serve as criteria for validity investigations of the screening procedures
(Houston, 1989).
To obtain the performance examples, workshops were conducted with MSGs, Detachment
Commanders, and the Instructors/Advisors at MSG School, all of whom had prior
experience as MSGs and/or Detachment Commanders. Participants in the workshops
were asked to write (in a structured format) examples of MSG behaviors that were indicative
of extremely effective, average, and extremely ineffective performance. This technique
yielded over 300 examples of behavior that realistically portrayed both highly
effective and highly ineffective MSG performance. The examples were then sorted into
categories that represented important dimensions of the MSG job. The set of dimensions,
and the list of behaviors in each dimension, was the starting point in the development
of a CVAL measure.
Other sources of information included: evaluation forms that had been developed for use
at MSG School, e.g., Peer Evaluation Forms and Screening Board Evaluation Forms;
checklists developed for use as indicators of chemical dependency and emotional instability;
and reports of existing personnel reliability programs, e.g., the Air Force’s Nuclear
Weapons Personnel Reliability Program (PRP), the Department of Energy’s Human
Reliability Program (HRP), and the Navy’s Security Access Eligibility Report (SAER).
Another helpful source of information was the record of MSG Non Judicial Punishments
and Reliefs For Cause kept at MSG Battalion Headquarters. A content analysis of these
records was performed, to determine what types of behavior problems seemed to be the
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