Research for PP

This paper concerns a statistical problem in estimating relationships between resources and readiness. Specifically, it addresses the question, which term resources or readiness, is the discretionary, or causal variable, and which is the determined, or effect variable. This issue is discussed in the context of the Naval shore establishment.

This paper attempts to clarify the relationships among the following four hypotheses: (1) the number of material failures across intervals of calendar time containing equal accumulated flight hours follows a Poisson distribution; (2) the number of elapsed flight hours between successive independent material failures follows an expotential distribution; (3) the expected number of monthly material failures is exactly proportional to monthly flight hours; and (4) the observed number of monthly material failures is strongly correlated with monthly flight hours.

Four logit specification tests for the case of grouped data have been developed. The first test compares the covariance matrix of the regression residuals to the matrix expected under the logit model. The second and third tests directly address the zero restrictions and cross-equation equality restrictions associated with the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA) property. The fourth test embeds the logit model within a grouped data version of the nested logit model, which does not possess the IIA property. The logit model was marginally rejected in one data set, and strongly rejected in the other two data sets.

This paper examines the effectiveness of training for U.S. Naval personnel, using data from the Enlisted Utilization Survey and from Navy administrative records. Using these sources the productivity of typical first-term Naval enlistees in 12 major occupational specialties, at four points in time was assessed. Also cost estimates for the two training modes was constructed.