Air Force Enlisted Job Clusters: An Exploration in Numerical Job Classification

This study tested a nomothetic approach to the description and classification of U.S. Air Force enlisted jobs. Incumbents from 180 jobs rated their positions on the General Work Inventory (GWI), a 268-item structured job analysis questionnaire containing both worker- and job-oriented descriptors. From those ratings, a mean score profile was computed for each job on 48 previously derived GWI sectional factors. Following the elimination of 7 jobs with low interrater agreement, the remaining 173 jobs were cluster analyzed based on intercorrelations among their mean factor-score profiles. This analysis produced 21 meaningful and stable job clusters that merged into broader job families. The results support the feasibility of a numerical enlisted job taxonomy. The GWI is seen as complementary and linkable to the established job-task inventory method. Areas of potential application in personnel management and development are identified.