Predicting Graduation from a Police Academy with the Kuder Occupational Interest Survey

Abstract

Vocational guidance tests appear to be of little use for predicting success in the training academy (e.g., DuBois & Watson, 1950). The present study was designed to explore their usefulness in a modern training academy. 115 male state police recruits who graduated from a training academy were compared with 24 who resigned or who were dismissed for their scores on the Kuder Occupational Interest Survey, Form DD (Kuder, 1970) which provides scores for 77 occupations and 29 college majors. The two groups differed significantly at the 5 O/o level on only one of the 77 occupational scales, that for radio station manager, and one significant result in 77 comparisons is very likely to be due to chance. In particular, the two groups did not differ in their scores on the police officer scale (respective means 0.46 and 0.43, SDs = 0.09 and 0.10, t = 1.53, df = 137, p = 0.13). The two groups differed significantly on three of the 29 college majors: those graduating scored higher on physical education (means 0.51 and 0.47, t = 2.04, p = 0.04), US air force cadet (0.46 and 0.42, t = 1.99, p = 0.05), and US military cadet (0.45 and 0.40, r = 2.14, p = 0.03). The mean score for those graduating was higher on 75 of the 77 occupational scales and on all 29 college major scales. Each subject was scored for how many college major scales he was below the average of all 139 subjects. These scores failed to differentiate the two groups (mean scores 13.2 and 15.5, r = 0.89). Thus, this study produced no evidence to indicate that the Kuder Occupational Interest Survey would help predict success in graduating from a police training academy.