192 



FUTURE SELECTION OF AQUANAUTS 



Table 7 

 INTERCORRELATIONS OF DEMOGRAPHIC AND CRITERION VARIABLES 



''"Fewer considered better. 

 Tp 0.10, slightly correlated. 

 +p 0.05, moderately correlated. 

 §p 0.01, highly correlated. 



The predictors most frequently and highly correlated with the criteria are age, diving ex- 

 perience, birth order, and size of home town. Family mobility is correlated with only one of 

 the criteria, and education is correlated with none. Among the criteria, number of sorties, 

 diving time, outside telephone calls, teammate choice, and leader rating each have two or more 

 significant correlations with predictors. It is interesting to note that of the three self-report 

 criteria (meal satisfaction, quality of sleep, and times up during the night) only one is corre- 

 lated, and that one only slightly, with only one of the predictors. Number of human-performance 

 tasks completed and changes in diving time are not correlated with any of the predictors. 

 There are three facts of interest in Table 7 which lend particular weight to the results. First 

 is the fact that the better or harder criteria are the ones correlated with the predictors. Sec- 

 ond is the large number of significant correlations. Third is the internal consistency of the 

 results. Each of these points warrants a brief elaboration. 



By better or harder criteria is meant those which are based on more data rather than less, 

 objective data rather than subjective, and direct rather than indirect measures. Thus, number 

 of outside telephone calls is a harder measure of adjustment than are meal satisfaction, quality 

 of sleep, and times up during the night, because it is an objective and factual record rather 

 than a subjective self-report. The difference here is in rating a man by what he does rather 

 than by what he says. Number of human-performance tasks completed is a poorer measure of 

 work performance than number of sorties, simply because there were so many fewer human- 

 performance tasks performed than there were sorties. Change in diving time is a complex and 

 derived measure compared to the straight record of diving time. The variable of teammate 

 choice involves a tremendous amount of data, since in reality each man was rated 27 separate 

 times, since he either was or was not chosen by his fellow aquanauts. The leader ratings can 



