Accession Number:

ADA331154

Title:

Form Assembly for the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) - An Optimal and a Heuristic Approach

Descriptive Note:

Master's thesis

Corporate Author:

NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY CA DEPT OF OPERATIONS RESEARCH

Personal Author(s):

• Kunde, Dietmar

Report Date:

1997-03-01

Pagination or Media Count:

55.0

Abstract:

The 1948 Selective Service Act established a process whereby all Unite States US military applicants take an aptitude test to measure their suitability for military job specialties. The latest version of these tests, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery ASVAB, was introduced in 1968. Approximately 900,000 High School students from 14,000 US High Schools take the ASVAB test each year. This paper and pencil test requires the applicant to answer multiple choice question items on a printed form. The creation of paper and pencil forms in one of the ten test topics is called form assembly. Form assembly consist of picking 20 to 35 items from an item pool of about 300 items such that 1 each item appears on at most one form 2 each forms result represents the applicants capability and 3 each form has the same level of difficulty. The thesis models the creation of paper and pencil forms as a mixed integer linear goal program and solves the problem both optimally and heuristically. Computational results for seven ASVAB-Tests show both methods help improve the form assembly process.

Descriptors:

• *ENLISTED PERSONNEL
• *APTITUDE TESTS
• *TEST CONSTRUCTION(PSYCHOLOGY)
• MILITARY REQUIREMENTS
• PERFORMANCE(HUMAN)
• STATISTICAL DATA
• HEURISTIC METHODS
• PERSONNEL SELECTION
• MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALTIES
• INTELLIGENCE TESTS

Subject Categories:

• Personnel Management and Labor Relations
• Operations Research

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE