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A Statistical Critique of the Usafi Tests of General Educational Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Warren G. Findley  and
Neal B. Andregg
Warren G. Findley
Affiliation:
The Air University
Neal B. Andregg
Affiliation:
The Air University
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Abstract

Data resulting from the administration of the USAFI Tests of General Educational Development to more than 1000 junior Air Force officers have been statistically analyzed to indicate the reliability of these tests, their correlation with school achievement, the comparability of their intercorrelations with intercorrelations among grades in school subjects, their capacity for differential diagnosis, their factorial composition, and their average item-test correlations. In the light of these findings and the finding that there is a low gradient between achievement on these tests and amount of formal education among these officers, the tests have been evaluated as possessing the practical validity suggested by their face validity for selection of young Air Force officers for assignment to study at civilian colleges and universities.

Type
Original Paper
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 1949 , pp. 47 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © 1949 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

*

Paper read before the National Council on Measurements Used in Education, Atlantic City, New Jersey, February 24, 1948. The writers are indebted to Dr. James E. Greene, formerly Deputy for Research of the Educational Advisory Staff, The Air University, for aid in planning and sponsoring this study.

References

* HS Grad—High-school graduate

C1—1 year college

C2—2 year college

C3—3 year college

C Grand— College graduate

Total—Includes a few students who were non-high-school graduates and a few students with 1 or or more years of graduate study.

* HS Grad—High-school graduate

C1—1 year college

C2—2 year college

C3—3 year college

C Grand— College graduate

Total—Includes 36 students with 1 or more years of graduate study.

* In a subsequent class, Class 48-B, the current Army General Classification Test was given to all 737 students. The correlation with grades was .42. In this latter class the grades were based on highly similar and no less reliable data.

* Here and elsewhere in the article it is argued that uniformly high motivation on these work-limit tests tends to produce higher intercorrelations than would prevail under conditions involving less uniformly high motivation. Critical readers of the manuscript have pointed out that higher motivation might well have resulted in narrower ranges of scores, with resultant lower intercorrelations. The writers are independently certain that factors were operating in Class 47-C that were calculated to produce more uniformly high motivation in taking the tests than prevailed in Class 47-B. The higher medians and slightly narrower interquartile ranges shown for Class 47-C in Table 1 confirm this. Yet the reliability coefficients in Table 5 are approximately the same in both classes and the intercorrelations in Table 6 show an increase for Class 47-C. It is felt that it is a fair hypothesis that under the ordinary motivation in Class 47-B, some examinees did well where they readily excelled but poorly where they were not so gifted or interested; in Class 47-C, a comparable group of examinees under uniformly high motivation brought themselves through extended effort to relatively high levels of achievement in subjects in which they were not inherently interested or gifted, while they were unable to do significantly better in subjects in which they achieved readily.

* Guilford, J. P. Psychometric methods. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936, pp. 478-496.

* Student officers of Class 47-A, Air Tactical School.

† Members of Academic and Administrative Staff, Headquarters, The Air University.

‡ Student officers of Class 47-B. Air Tactical School.

* Adkins, Dorothy C. and Toops, Herbert A. Simplified formulas for item selection and construction. Psychometrika, 1937, 2, 165-171.