Research for Enlisted Screening Test

Two forms, each containing 35 verbal and 30 mathematics items, have been developed for a new Enlistment Screening Test (EST) to predict Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) scores of military applicants. These forms were constructed in two stages from items in discontinued versions of the Defense Department's test batteries. The first stage was to develop overlength forms from the available item pool. This research memorandum describes the second stage: constructing final forms by selecting items from the overlength forms. Item selection was based on the correlation of the item with AFQT, in a subsample of applicants with AFQT percentiles between 21 and 65. For each EST form, the AFQT score was predicted from the total score on the final EST items. The results were used to calculate expectancy tables which, for any given EST score, provide probabilities of exceeding the specified AFQT cutoffs. These probabilities are reported in tables.