Air Force Officer Qualifying Test (AFOQT): Development of an Item Bank

Abstract : The Air Force Officer Qualifying Test (AFOQT) has been part of the selection process for officer commissioning programs and pilot and navigator training since 1951. Form O, the latest of 15 successive forms of the AFOQT, contains 380 items organized into 16 subtests which form five composites: Pilot, Navigator-Technical, Academic Aptitude, Verbal, and Quantitative. The anticipated need for future forms of the AFOQT prompted the development of a large pool of experimental items. Approximately 6,000 items were developed and administered (along with Form O items) to basic airmen and officer cadets attending military training programs. One of the goals of this development was to provide an item bank for the development of future forms that emulate the content of Form O. The enhanced identification system accompanying each item allows increased efficiency of data retrieval to locate and combine desired item sets. This was accomplished by the creation of a magnetic data tape containing statistics, keys, sample identification, and information for interfacing tape data with item text residing on a computer data bank, with item graphics on cards, and with the printed experimental test booklets. The new AFOQT item bank contains the essential components for automated test construction. The next step in providing a sophisticated item bank would be to employ a computer application that permits immediate terminal display of item text, illustration, graphs and statistics.