Research for ASVAB

The Department of Defense sponsors the Student Testing Program (STP), which provides a form of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) for use in high schools and in postsecondary schools. The test scores are used for career exploration in the schools and may also be used to enlist in the armed forces. This document describes our development of national norms for students in the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades as well as postsecondary (2-year) colleges. The norms are based on data collected as part of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97).

This analysis was conducted in support of the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) and its effort to provide norms for the Student Testing Program (STP). Through the STP, free testing on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) is provided to high schools for use with students in the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades. Norms are also provided for postsecondary students in two-year colleges. The data were collected during a nationwide administration of the ASVAB as part of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97). The objective of our analysis is to evaluate the suitability of the data for use in developing test norms for the STP. We examined the underlying demographics of the data and concluded that the data for students in the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades were suitable for the development of norms. This follows because the sample is representative of the target population with respect to all demographic variables known to be important correlates of test scores. The data sample for the postsecondary students was somewhat problematic but may be improved by weighting on appropriate demographic variables.

In 1997, in a joint effort, the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Department of Defense (DOD)collected aptitude test data from the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery )ASVAB) on a nationally representative sample of youth. The tests were administered as part of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97). A subset of data pertaining to youth 18 to 23 years of age is referred to as the Profile of American Youth (PAY 97). In 1999 CNA conducted an initial analysis of PAY 97 test scores. We concluded that the data sample was missing a large number of persons likely to deplete both the upper and lower levels of aptitude distributions. We further concluded that the loss would bias resulting norms unless corrected. We recommended weighting the data by race, gender, age, respondent's education, and a proxy for social economic status in an effort to correct the bias. The data were subsequently weighted by NORC. This report describes the follow-on analysis that we conducted on PAY 97 test scores. This work was funded by the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC).

Psychologists have always been interested in the extent to which general intelligence and specific aptitudes or information contribute to job performance. Results show that for predicting mechanical performance, operational measures of general intelligence should include technical testes, and that hands-on measures result in different outcomes compared to traditional surrogate measures of job performance.