494 



SELECTION AND TRAINING 



assignments were made with very little con- 

 sideration of ability. "Wliat is required is a 

 set of valid classification data which can 

 follow the man to each station and can be 

 used there for making further sssignments. 

 It is essential that these data be used, and 

 that periodic checks be made to assure that 

 men classified on shipboard are competent in 

 their rates. Standardized examinations for 

 advancement in rating can be developed 

 (44). More work of this type is needed in 

 order to upgrade the quality of shipboard 

 strikers. Development of this program is an 

 administrative problem. 



Utilization of Personnel 



A corollary weakness to the placement of 

 inadequate men in important posts is the 

 wastage of trained men. In World War II, 

 some of this was unavoidable due to strategic 

 developments. But many times men were 

 graduated from a school and sent to duty 

 where their newly acquired skill was not 

 called for. The Army developed a person- 

 nel audit procedure to make sure that men 

 were not retained on jobs which less trained 

 men could do. While these methods met a 

 wartime problem, it is probable that interim 

 research can develop a more effective plan 

 for utilization of superior men. 



Judgment in Classification 



A serious problem for the armed services is 

 whether classification specialists should be 

 allowed to use judgment in disposing of 

 cases. One could average a man's scores 

 and assign him without thought, or one could 

 consider supplementary facts about him in 

 making an assignment. All logic and psy- 

 chology would be on the side of the second 

 alternative, since use of one's intelligence 

 should improve prediction. But the evi- 

 dence from two wartime studies (10, 16, pp. 

 287-288) shows that, under sei^vice condi- 

 tions, whenever classifiers departed from the 

 disposal warranted by test scores, they made 

 poorer selections than if they had followed 

 the scores blindly. This should not be; re- 



search is required to determine exactly why 

 "intelligent" departure from test results goes 

 wrong, and how judgment can be used to 

 improve rather than decrease efficiency of 

 personnel placement. 



Tests of Aptitude 



In every characteristic we study, men vary 

 greatly. This is not just a matter of their 

 training or their willingness to do well; per- 

 formance varies because of differences in 

 aptitude which can be overcome, if at all, 

 only by long and arduous training. It is 

 common for the best men in any aptitude to 

 be three to six times as good as the poorest 

 men. Thus, the best lookouts detect targets 

 at four times the range of the poorest look- 

 outs (39). Men near the average are not 

 much different from each other, but men at 

 the extremes are quite exceptional. Sup- 

 pose, on a typical test, two-thirds of the men 

 fall within 10 points of average. Then 15 

 percent more will be from 10 to 20 points 

 above average, and there is a small group of 

 outstanding men who are as much as 30 

 points beyond average. If these men are 

 entrusted with the most difficult tasks, they 

 will perform them much better than the 

 average or slightly superior men. Because 

 there is so much difference between the top 

 five percent and the men who merely reach 

 the top quarter of a group, it is essential that 

 aptitude testing identify the truly best men. 

 Fortunately, the man best in one specialty is 

 not likely to be best in another. Most techni- 

 cal jobs require intelligence, but in addition 

 different jobs make special demands for coor- 

 dination, sense of rhythm, vision, mechani- 

 cal knowledge, and so on. There is a great 

 difference in effectiveness between a force 

 where there is a good man on every job and a 

 force where the man on each job is the very 

 best man for that duty. It is the latter force 

 whose lookouts sight airplanes at extreme 

 range, and whose pilots make carrier land- 

 ings in a rough sea with minimum accidents. 



Aptitude testing has been of great serv- 

 ice in upgrading military forces. Air Force 



