FACTOR STRUCTURE OF THE AIR-FORCE OFFICER QUALIFYING TEST - ANALYSIS AND COMPARISON

The Air Force Officer Qualifying Test (AFOQT) is used to qualify men a nd women for commissions in the Air Force, classify them for pilot and navigator jobs, and award Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) schol arships. Despite more than three decades of use, little published lite rature exists outside of Air Force technical reports, which do not rec eive wide distribution. One of the most important details about a test battery is which factors it measures. To determine this, several fact or models were tested with structural equations. Most of the models we re hierarchical with general cognitive ability (g) as the highest fact or. A model with hierarchical g and the five lower order factors of ve rbal, math, spatial, aircrew, and perceptual speed fit the data best. The factor structure of the AFOOT was compared to the factor structure of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), the enlist ment qualification test battery. The AFOQT was found to contain a grea ter number of factors than did the ASVAB. Given the confirmed AFOOT fa ctor structure, four methods of increasing its validity are proposed a nd discussed. These methods are increasing reliability of the tests, i ncreasing the g saturation, adding job knowledge tests, and adding add itional valid factors.