As part of the military recruiting effort, the Department of Defense sponsors surveys of the national youth population to help design recruiting and advertising strategies. This report develops and applies a method of using the information contained in national youth surveys to estimate the probability that respondents taking the Armed Forces…

Researchers at the Coast Guard Academy have designed and tested a series of exercises for assessing the development of intellectual skills in an interdisciplinary context and providing career-related motivation for continued learning. These exercises are based on realistic situations that cadets might encounter as commissioned officers in the…

An evaluation was conducted of minority (Black, Hispanic, Asian, American Indian) and female performance in the Army's Initial Entry Rotary Wing flight training program. Each minority group was compared to a matched sample of majority students. The groups were matched on several test scores, education level, age, rank, and source of entry. The…

As part of the United States Army's Project A, research has been conducted to develop and field test a battery of experimental tests to complement the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery in predicting soldiers' job performance. Project A is the United States Army's large-scale manpower effort to improve selection, classification, and…

Tuition Assistance (TA) is a military-sponsored program that reimburses military members for 75% of the tuition costs of college classes while on active duty in the hope of making military service more attractive to young people and encouraging them to remain in the military. TA's effectiveness was examined by using two models--a bivariate probit…

The Department of Defense is developing norms for its Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) and the newly created Interest Finder, a vocational interest inventory. The normative effort, called the 1997 Profile of American Youth (PAY97), will be undertaken as part of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of…

Lessons derived from the Job Performance Measurement (JPM) Project, which is overseen by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Management and Personnel, for educational assessment are explored. The JPM Project was initiated to develop high fidelity measures of performance on the job that can be used to evaluate personnel…

The composite of Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) subtests used to select applicants for entry-level training in Army clerical schools was evaluated by correlating composite scores with training performance scores. Comparisons were made between the multiple R for this optimal set of predictors and that for the composite of…

In terminating the GI Bill, Congress provided an alternative benefit to military personnel by passing Public Law 94-502, the Post-Vietnam Era Veterans' Educational Assistance Act of 1977 (VEAP). The purpose of VEAP was to provide educational assistance to men and women entering the armed services after termination of the GI Bill, to assist young…

Despite remedial programs and innovative practices, traditional education has not met the compelling need for increasing access to higher education for minority and other educationally disadvantaged students. Financial, geographical, scheduling, and degree requirement barriers still exist which prevent older adults, military personnel, the…

Victims of warfare, famine, slavery, and isolation, the Southern Sudanese are one of the most undereducated populations in the world. Since the inception of formal education in southern Sudan a century ago, schooling has largely consisted of island-like entities surrounded by oceans of educational emptiness. Islands of Education is the first book…

The quality of college programs at 13 U.S. military bases and the activities of various agencies for maintaining quality control were evaluated. Based on site visits to military bases in the continental United States and Hawaii in 1978, some academic programs appeared to have few standards and practices that promote quality. It is claimed that…

To determine the feasibility of developing skills training programs for women interested in skilled labor employment, a year-long study examined the problems surrounding the influx of women into skilled labor occupations and the elements which define success in gaining employment. The study was conducted in two phases: an exploratory phase and a…

Drawing on recent psychological and neurological research on how individual differences might interact with learning a particular language, the study examines how psycholinguistic research and theory can help in assigning military personnel to language training and to a given language. Using the Defense Language Institute's Defense Language…

The potential of distance learning (DL) to expedite the U.S. Army's efforts to redress personnel shortages in Army enlisted occupations was studied by evaluating how DL-based training strategies might affect skill shortages in the following occupations: helicopter repairer; electronic switching system operator; microwave systems…