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The latest form of the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test (AFOQT) Form P is the first AFOQT to be developed in two parallel forms, Forms P1 and P2. The AFOQT has been part of the selection process for officer commissioning programs and for specific programs such as pilot and navigator training since 1951. Forms P1 and P2 are organized into 16 subtests which form five composites: Pilot, Navigator-Technical, Academic Aptitude, Verbal, and Quantitative. The present report is a test manual for Form P. It describes the development of Form P; its continuity with Form O via common items and characteristics; statistical data for Forms P1 and P2, such as reliability, item difficulty, item discrimination, score characteristics, and norms; test validity derived from studies of other AFOQT forms; and considerations of administration, scoring, and interpretation. Sample questions and pertinent bibliographic references are included.

The Air Force Officer Qualifying Test (AFOQT), a component of the selection system for officer commissioning programs and aircrew training, undergoes frequent scrutiny for validity, currency, and security. As part of that effort, a project was undertaken to develop measures of cognitive abilities not assessed by the AFOQT. Ten new test prototypes and three existing, unpublished tests were constructed. The objectives for the new tests were to improve linkage with Air Force officer job requirements, improve selection to officer commissioning programs, and expand the AFOQT classification utility beyond that of aircrew ability measurements. Items for all 13 tests were administered to samples of basic airmen; and subsets of newly constructed items for four tests, to samples of officer candidates. Item and test characteristics were evaluated using classical test theory and Item Response Theory analyses. Results were entered into an item banking system designed to store the item text, graphics and statistics for the new tests. Results were promising, with most tests showing moderate to high internal consistency reliability. Some tests were found to be too difficult for airmen, but supplemental data from officer candidates suggested that item difficulty and discrimination statistics would be expected to improve for higher ability examinees in the officer applicant population for which the tests were designed. (kr)

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.

The Air Force Officer Qualifying Test (AFOQT) has been part of the selection process for officer commissioning programs and pilot and navigator training since 1951. Form O, the latest of 15 successive forms of the AFOQT, 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 6,000 items were developed and administered (along with Form O items) to basic airmen and officer cadets attending military training programs. One of the goals of this development was to provide an item bank for the development of future forms that emulate the content of Form O. The enhanced identification system accompanying each item allows increased efficiency of data retrieval to locate and combine desired item sets. This was accomplished by the creation of a magnetic data tape containing statistics, keys, sample identification, and information for interfacing tape data with item text residing on a computer data bank, with item graphics on cards, and with the printed experimental test booklets. The new AFOQT item bank contains the essential components for automated test construction. The next step in providing a sophisticated item bank would be to employ a computer application that permits immediate terminal display of item text, illustration, graphs and statistics.