Off-Line Field Test Design for Evaluating Two Approaches to Person-Job Matching: The Army Recruit Quota System (REQUEST) and the Enlisted Personnel Allocation System (EPAS)

摘要

The Enlisted Personnel Allocation System (EPAS), initially developed through a multi-year research and development project conducted by the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI), is the latest tool available to the Army for improving the classification process. Designed to be a subsystem of the Recruit Quota System (REQUEST), EPAS is a person-job- matching (PJM) method that optimizes the assignment of recruits to entry-level military occupational specialty (MOS) training. It goes beyond REQUEST, the Army's present approach to PJM. REQUEST identifies high priority MOS for which an applicant meets the minimum Aptitude Area composite score qualifications. In addition, EPAS identifies those MOS in which an individual is likely to perform with the greatest effectiveness, while meeting overall Army accession goals and filling critical MOS. A PC-EPAS prototype was created and evaluated based on laboratory simulations of the Army's classification process in FY 1998. The results of laboratory classification simulations provided evidence that EPAS can improve the mean predicted performance (measured as the average Aptitude Area composite score of recruits in their assigned job training) of a fiscal year recruit cohort, while simultaneously meeting Army enlistment requirements. Based on these positive laboratory results, ARI developed a production version of EPAS in FY 2000. The planned field test will examine the likelihood of realizing the laboratory findings in an 'operational' environment, using EPAS linked as a subsystem to REQUEST and to actual transactions data within a simulation framework. This report describes the planned field test design.