Air Force Officer Qualifying Test (AFOQT) Form P: Test Construction

Abstract

Abstract : Since 1951, the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test (AFOQT) has been part of the selection process for officer commissioning programs and pilot and navigator training. The latest of 15 successive forms of the AFOQT, Form O, contains 380 items organized into 16 subtests which form five composites: Pilot, Navigator Technical, Academic Aptitude, Verbal, and Quantitative. The anticipated need for future forms of the AFOQT prompted the development of a large pool of experimental items. Approximately 4,800 items were developed and administered (along with Form O items) to basic airmen and officer cadets attending military training programs. The immediate goal was to construct a follow-on AFOQT Form P in two parallel forms. Item analyses of the experimental test results provided item difficulty and discrimination data that helped to guide the selection of new and Form O items for Form P. Resemblance to Form O in psychometric properties, content, and style was the criterion for Form P item selection. Preliminary analyses of the newly constructed forms (P1 and P2) indicated that they were highly similar to each other as well as being comparable to Form O in content, item difficulty, and item discriminative power. Follow-on research with additional military samples is recommended to assess more fully the parallelism among the three forms.