Golaround

Since the inception of personnel research programs in the Army and the other military services, research results have consistently revealed that marginal personnel, as defined by scores in the Category IV range on military aptitude measures, produce more than their share of disciplinary problems and unsatisfactory performance in training and on the job. Hence a persistent research problem has been to find ways to screen out an many poor risks as possible and to accept all potentially satisfactory soldiers. Because the present operational measures are reasonably effective in covering the major intellective areas, this task objective was to concentrate on the noncognitive, non-intellectual areas, involving motivational, attitudinal, and personality variables insofar as practicable. Many marginal scorers on the aptitude test batteries are school dropouts without substantive academic achievements and possibly with little fondness for paper and pencil work. For this reason it was judged that tests and measures developed in this project should not resemble school-type measures. Instead, the development effort should be directed to performance tasks calling upon physical activity, where the intellectually limited might have more interest and feel more confident.