no. 3.] PSYCHOLOGICAL EXAMINING IN THE UNITED STATES ARMY. 



859 



great difference between the captains and the majors. Apparently the low rating of the medical 

 officers is due to the fact that the captains and first lieutenants who score low keep the average 

 of the entire Medical Department down. The higher ranking officers make slightly better records 

 than the higher officers of the other branches of the service combined ; the majors and higher 

 officers in the Medical Corps rate higher than officers of like rank in the Infantry and Artillery, 

 and are surpassed only by the Engineers. 



Table 409. — Means of the alpha scores of the officers according to rank. 

 Officers of the Medical Department not included in these figures. 



Table 411. — Means of the alpha scores of medical officers according to rank. 1 



The high standing of the medical officers above the rank of captain is probably explained 

 by the fact that in the Medical Department the officers are called upon to perform duties very 

 closely resembling their work in civil life, and a man can be ranked when he enters the service 

 according to his professional standing and placed at once in a position for which he is approxi- 

 mately fitted. In the other branches of the service the most of the men are called upon to do 

 many things much outside their training and experience, so that regardless of their intellectual 

 ability they have to spend considerable time in learning their military duties; thus rank must 

 of necessity depend to a large extent on the length of time they have actually been in the 

 Army. Moreover, the Medical Department is the only one in which men were commissioned 

 in great numbers direct from civil life without a try-out at an officers' training camp. This 

 procedure presumably accounts for the low standing of the junior officers in the Medical 

 Department as well as for the fact that the senior officers are better placed according to ability. 

 It is possible that such branches of the service as ordnance or chemical warfare would show 

 the same state of affairs were the data at hand. 



Table 413 shows for enlisted men the relationship of intelligence rating and rank to the 

 type of examination taken (whether alpha or beta). The significant thing is that as the rank 

 increases the percentage of men who take beta decreases; at the same time there is an increase 

 in the percentage of men getting the higher grades. 



Table 413. — Percentages of men taking alpha and beta, and percentages making A or B in each of these examinations, 



for 1 6944 enlisted men by grades. 



Rank. 



Sergeant 

 Corporal 

 Private. 

 Recruit. 



Men taking ex- 

 amination alpha 

 only. 



Per cent 



with 

 A or B. 



50.3 

 41.8 

 23.4 

 17.4 



Per cent 

 taking 

 alpha 

 only. 



97.7 

 86.3 

 72.1 



Men taking ex- 

 amination beta, 

 alone or with 

 alpha, or with 

 an individual ex- 

 amination. 



Per cent 



with 

 A or B. 



0.2 

 0.5 

 0.5 

 1.1 



Per cent 

 taking 

 beta. 



1.6 

 2.7 

 14.3 



28.8 



Total 

 number 

 of men. 



444 



233 



15,647 



620 



i Tables 410 and 412 are omitted. 



