stration of that value. From its inception, the central premise of the JPM Project was that a good behavioral criterion measure was the necessary condition for demonstrating the predictive value of the ASVAB.

The first—and in the early years, the most pressing—goal of the JPM Project was a retrospective examination of the ASVAB to determine if its value for predicting job performance was sufficient to support its continued use.

Given that the purpose of employment testing is to identify those who will be capable of successfully meeting the demands of the job or jobs in question, the testing enterprise should begin with a conceptual and operational definition of success. Grade-point average is an unusually pertinent measure of success for validating tests used to screen applicants for admission to colleges, universities, and professional schools. No equally satisfying measure is readily available in most employment situations, however.

Traditionally, the use of military entrance tests to determine enlistment eligibility has been justified with the criterion of success in technical training school. Training school outcomes are recorded in each enlistee 's administrative file and, at least until the widespread introduction of pass/fail grading and self-paced instructional systems, they provided a reasonable measure of the relative success of trainees that could be related to scores on selection tests. Minimum entrance standards were typically set so that at least 90 percent of recruits could pass the regular training course (Eitelberg, 1988).

But, as Jenkins (1946, 1950) taught an earlier generation, performance in technical training is not the same as performance on the job. Although technical training is organized fairly narrowly by job specialty (e.g., jet engine mechanic, avionics specialist, machinist's mate), it provides only a partial introduction to a job—witness the amount of on-the-job training required for many military occupations. Moreover, the instructional emphasis in technical training is largely job knowledge, which does not translate directly into actual performance. And finally, success in technical training requires academic skills that may not be of great importance in the workplace. To the extent that training departs from actual job requirements, either in what it omits or in the additional skills or characteristics it demands, its value for validating selection and classification procedures is lessened.

In the context of the debate about voluntary military service and congressional reactions to the misnorming episode, the training criterion no longer offered a credible defense of the ASVAB as an effective instrument for

Front Matter (R1-R12)

Overview (1-14)

1. Psychological Testing and the Challenge of the Criterion (15-30)

2. Policy Goals and Testing (31-55)

3. Improving Job Performance Criteria for Selection Tests (56-72)

4. The Development of Job Performance Measures (73-102)

5. The Testing of Personnel (103-115)

6. Evaluating the Quality of Performance Measures: Reliability (116-127)

7. Evaluating the Quality of Performance Measures: Content Representativeness (128-140)

8. Evaluating the Quality of Performance Measures: Criterion-Related Validity Evidence (141-183)

9. The Management of Human Resources (184-206)

Coda: The JPM Project and Accession Policy (207-210)

References (211-224)

Appendix A: Service Bibliographies (225-246)

Appendix B: Biographical Sketches (247-250)

Index (251-260)