Expanding the Concept of Quality in Personnel

This report describes a project designed to determine if new predictors of performance which could increment currently available operational or experimental aptitude measures could be identified. The focus of prediction was performance of army non-commissioned officers (NCO). New tests of NCO situational judgment, prioritization skills, and self efficacy were examined in terms of what they could add in terms of predictive power to a set of available measures--a cognitive composite, a spatial test, and a temperament measure. These were linked to a composite criterion measure based on a structured interview, supervisor behavioral ratings, and supervisor situational ratings. New and existing measures were administered to 691 non-commissioned officers across four grade levels. The situational judgment test and a situational self-efficacy measure had moderate correlations with a composite criterion and each added a small increment to the validity generated by a combination of the existing predictors. It appears that situational judgment tests and self-efficacy measures have promise in predicting leader performance although most of the predictive variance they provide may be shared with that of tests of cognitive ability and temperament.