Development of the Tailored Adaptive Personality Assessment System (TAPAS) to Support Army Personnel Selection and Classification Decisions.

摘要

The U.S. Army requires efficient and effective methods for entry-level Army selection and classification decisions. Accordingly, the Tailored Adaptive Personality Assessment System (TAPAS) was developed to assess personality factors related to performance in the Army. TAPAS assesses up to 21 subdimensions of the Big Five personality factors and several additional personality characteristics relevant to military settings. Of particular importance is that TAPAS is designed to be resistant to faking good, so that it can be used for high stakes assessment such as enlistment testing. Each TAPAS item consists of two statements, balanced in social desirability, and a respondent picks the statement that is 'more like me.' Two item pools were developed and item response theory was used for to administer items as a computerized adaptive test (CAT). Early results from an initial operational test and assessment (IOT&E) indicate little adverse impact on females and minority groups. In addition, mean scores for Army applicants who take TAPAS as part of enlistment screening are very similar to Air Force applicants who are administered TAPAS for research purposes only, which indicates good resistance to faking.