Recruit Quality, Soldier Performance, and Job Assignment

The relationship between recruit quality and actual soldier performance is an issue of continuing interest to both Army and congressional policy makers. Information about the strength of this relationship and the degree to which the characteristics measured by the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) and educational attainment vary in importance across Army jobs is particularly important in two areas: (a) properly allocating resources among the tasks of recruiting, training, and equipping soldiers and (b) matching soldiers with jobs in a way that makes the best possible use of the shrinking pool of available recruits. A conceptual framework to link multiple measures of recruit performance and costs with job assignments was developed. Data envelopment analysis was used to construct an index of performance. Statistical analyses were then performed to examine the relationship of recruit characteristics to the performance index. Results were that enlistment test scores predicted performance, but education did not. Keywords: Recruit quality, Soldier performance, Multidimensional scaling, Data envelopment analysis, Person-job matching, Army training. Prepared in cooperation with Pennsylvania Univ., Philadelphia, Rept. no. PMW-8621.