Development of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) Forms 2 and 3

Abstract : The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, (ASVAB), composed of the common elements of operational classification batteries used by the different services, has been given to high school students since 1968. Results are used by the schools for counseling and by the Armed Services for selecting and classifying potential recruits. The present report documents the development and validation of ASVAB Forms 2 and 3, parallel improved forms which were operational from January 1973 to January 1976. Steps in the development and validation were: (1) preparation of 200 new items for each of the eight cognitive tests of ASVAB-1; (2) field administration to approximately 4000 Selective Service registrants, stratified to represent the population of young men of military age in order to obtain basic data on the items; and (3) preparation of eight 25 item tests based on item analysis of the field data, and generation of two new forms of the noncognitive Coding Speed test; and (4) a second field administration to approximately 3500 registrants to derive norms and other statistical characteristics of the two new forms.