Selecting Soldiers and Civilians into the U.S. Army Officer Candidate School : Developing Empirical Selection Composites

Abstract : The U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI) initiated the Measures for Selecting Soldiers for the Officer Candidate School program of research to help select OCS applicants with high leadership potential and likelihood of staying in the Army. The present effort reports results from the third phase of this research. The purpose of this phase was to (a) cross-validate the results from the second phase with a sample of newly accessioned OCS candidates, (b) select the most promising individual instrument for predicting officer performance and continuance, and (c) develop an empirical selection composite. Results suggest that the Phase 2 and Phase 3 samples were quite different on a number of demographic and performance characteristics. Despite these differences, results suggest that the predictive validity for the experimental measures was consistent between Phase 2 and Phase 3. The most promising test measured personality and motivations. Finally, a new set of composites developed to predict officer performance and continuance demonstrated strong validity that held up in a different sample from the development sample. ARI plans to use these results to prepare the experimental measures for testing in an operational setting.

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