A Catalogue of Performance Evaluation Tests for Environmental Research

Abstract

Performance Evaluation Tests for Environmental Research (PETER) are under development at the Naval Biodynamics Laboratory and supporting organizations. The tests, or tasks, studied in this program have been largely derived from the literature. Each task was evaluated for suitability for repeated measures experimental designs which are almost universally used in environmental research. Suitability criteria included the “stability” of task means, standard deviations, and between-trial correlations. The magnitude of the “stabilized” between-trial correlations, task definition, was also examined with respect to the administration time. There are 60 active tasks in the present program. All tasks examined to date exhibit stable means and variances after adequate practice but: (a) less than 30% meet minimal stability criteria for intertrial correlations; and (b) substantial practice (typically more than an hour over five days) is required to achieve stability. A tabular catalogue of the research findings and background for 15 tasks is presented and discussed.