Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery: Correcting the Speeded Subtests for the 1980 Youth Population.

In the effort to change the reference base of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude BAttery to a sample representative of American youth in 1980, anomalies noted in the speeded subtest performance of the new sample indicated it might be an inappropriate reference. Discrepancies were traced to a nonoperational answer sheet us ed for data collection of the 1980 youth sample. An experimental study was conducted to correct the problem by equating scores on nonoperational answer sheets to scores on operational answer sheets. Data were collected on the speeded subtests from about 9,500 service applicants at Military Entrance Processing Stations; half used operational answer sheets and half used the nonoperational answer sheets that were employed in the youth sample. The results indicated that the adjustments for the answer sheets resolved the anomalies and that the 1980 sample of American youth could be appropriately used with these adjustments. Keywords: 1980 youth population; and Answer sheets.