Page 29 - Biobehavioral Resilence to Stress

6 Biobehavioral Resilience to Stress

At present, only one item in this form addresses the issue of psychiatric disorder,
inquiring as to whether the applicant has ever seen a mental health profes-
sional for any reason. Although this is useful information, many individuals
who have severe mental or behavioral problems have never received treatment
and so would not be identified by an honest answer to this question.

At military enlistment processing stations, recruits complete a medi-
cal history questionnaire. Unfortunately, attrition data were not gathered

to construct and evaluate this questionnaire. Thus, it is not clear which test
items, if any, might be useful as a means to identify individuals who may be
at increased risk for attrition based on a history of medical or psychiatric
problems.
There is one instrument currently in use to screen non–high school

graduate applicants prior to their induction. The Assessment of Individual

Motivation (AIM) was developed by researchers at the U.S. Army Research

Institute (White & Young, 1998). The AIM gathers information that relates
to personality traits, such as the tendency to strive for excellence in the com-
pletion of work-related tasks, the tendency to have a positive outlook on life,
and the tendency to interact with others in a pleasant manner. Early results
obtained by researchers at the U.S. Army Research Institute suggested that
higher scores on the AIM were associated with lower rates of fi rst-term attri-
tion (e.g., White & Young, 1998). Based in part on these positive results, the
Army began using the AIM operationally with non–high school graduates in
2000 as part of the GED Plus program. However, the AIM was later also eval-
uated by the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) and by
independent consultants working directly for the Army Research Institute.
These additional examinations of AIM’s operational performance showed

that “its validity as a predictor of attrition under the GED Plus program was
much lower than it had demonstrated in previous work in a research setting”
(Knapp, Heggestad & Young, 2004, p. v).
In response to these findings, Young, White, Heggestad, and Barnes

(2004) explored several possible approaches to improving the AIM’s scor-
ing rules. By scoring a specific subset of AIM items, Young et al. obtained

statistically significant results for the prediction of attrition (r = 0.13). Based

on this result, the authors then constructed a new attrition screen, known as
the Tier 2 Attrition Screen (TTAS), which consists of the (1) AIM with the
new scoring system based on subset items, (2) Armed Services Vocational
Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) math knowledge and word knowledge scores, and
(3) gender-normed body mass index. Positive results have been reported for
the TTAS (Young et al., 2004).* Despite the reported success of the TTAS

* As a result, in the 2007 fiscal year, the U.S. Army will be permitted to double (to 14,200)

the number of non–high school graduates it was permitted to enlist during the previous
year (Kennedy, 2006).

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