An Experimental Investigation of the Military Police Firearms Qualification Course.

摘要

The Military Police Firearms Qualification Course (MPFQC) is a test of handgun marksmanship, composed of eight different 'tables' or combinations of distance and position for firing at stationary targets. In this experiment, 237 male Military Police (MP) students fired three repetitions of the test over a 2-day period, for a total of 240 trials per student. The results of a variety of analyses converge on a single conclusion: Tables 1-4 and 5-8 comprise two dichotomous tests, the 'difficult' and the 'easy.' Marginal students who fail the difficult tables may nonetheless pass the entire test by doing well on the easier tables. Classification errors showed that false positives and false negatives both average about 7%. False positives were perceived as being more serious than false negatives. The MPFQC works well as a training and testing instrument, although average scores must be interpreted with caution. (Author)