The Manpower Quality Decline

Abstract

Abstract : This article was begun as an attempt to resolve the conflicting and controversial reports issued from various sources on a perceived drop in the quality of military manpower in the middle and late 1970s. Review of the massive literature on this controversy led the authors to conclude that, for technical reasons, it would be impossible to resolve the question satisfactorily if the analysis were limited to data based solely on available military quality indices. Because a decline in the quality of military manpower might simply reflect a decline in civilian youth, and because there is increasing concern about such a decline, the authors enlarged the scope of their review to encompass various indices of the quality of civilian youth. If the civilian quality decline were real, the military decline was also real. Further, a civilian quality decline would have important implications for future military accessions. In studyin the purported civilian decline, the authors examined the various hypotheses that have been advanced to account for the drop in Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores and in other criteria of civilian quality. Most of the literature on the SAT score decline and related problems has been written from the psychoeducational perspective. Little attention has been paid to a very substantial body of evidence suggesting that changes in the physical/chemical environment may be causing the quality decline. Since few readers will be familiar with this literature, the authors have presented it (actually, a small sampling of it) in some detail. Finally, the various approaches that might be used to correct or cope with the military quality decline were discussed and recommendations made for research on the approaches regarded as most promising.