Daniel McNeish, Denis Dumas, Yixiao Dong, Donna Duellberg
{"title":"Promoting inclusive recruiting and selection into military training schools: Admission waivers versus retesting.","authors":"Daniel McNeish, Denis Dumas, Yixiao Dong, Donna Duellberg","doi":"10.1037/apl0001147","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>There is high-level interest in diversifying workforces, which has led organizations-including the U.S. Armed Forces-to reevaluate recruiting and selection practices. The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) has encountered particular difficulties in diversifying its workforce, and it relies mainly on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) for assigning active-duty recruits to one of 19 specialized training schools. When recruits' scores fall below ASVAB entrance standards, the USCG sometimes offers admission waivers. Alternatively, recruits can retest until their ASVAB scores meet the entrance standard. Retesting has shown mixed results in the personnel selection literature, so our main interest is to determine whether retesting or waivers best support USCG recruits' training school outcomes, especially for recruits identifying as an underrepresented minority (URM). We use data from 16,624 USCG recruits entering between 2013 and 2021 and fit augmented inverse propensity weighted models to assess differences in training outcomes by pathway to admission while accounting for self-selection into pathways. Our analyses found (a) no difference in training outcomes between recruits who qualified from their initial scores and recruits who retested, (b) recruits who received waivers were less likely to complete training school on time and spent more time in remedial training when they failed training school compared to those who retested, and (c) improvement in training outcomes for retesting over waivers was larger for recruits identifying as an URM. Results suggest that retesting may be an effective strategy for workforce diversification and for improving outcomes among recruits identifying as an URM. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":15135,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Applied Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"415-436"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Applied Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001147","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/10/19 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"MANAGEMENT","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
There is high-level interest in diversifying workforces, which has led organizations-including the U.S. Armed Forces-to reevaluate recruiting and selection practices. The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) has encountered particular difficulties in diversifying its workforce, and it relies mainly on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) for assigning active-duty recruits to one of 19 specialized training schools. When recruits' scores fall below ASVAB entrance standards, the USCG sometimes offers admission waivers. Alternatively, recruits can retest until their ASVAB scores meet the entrance standard. Retesting has shown mixed results in the personnel selection literature, so our main interest is to determine whether retesting or waivers best support USCG recruits' training school outcomes, especially for recruits identifying as an underrepresented minority (URM). We use data from 16,624 USCG recruits entering between 2013 and 2021 and fit augmented inverse propensity weighted models to assess differences in training outcomes by pathway to admission while accounting for self-selection into pathways. Our analyses found (a) no difference in training outcomes between recruits who qualified from their initial scores and recruits who retested, (b) recruits who received waivers were less likely to complete training school on time and spent more time in remedial training when they failed training school compared to those who retested, and (c) improvement in training outcomes for retesting over waivers was larger for recruits identifying as an URM. Results suggest that retesting may be an effective strategy for workforce diversification and for improving outcomes among recruits identifying as an URM. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Applied Psychology® focuses on publishing original investigations that contribute new knowledge and understanding to fields of applied psychology (excluding clinical and applied experimental or human factors, which are better suited for other APA journals). The journal primarily considers empirical and theoretical investigations that enhance understanding of cognitive, motivational, affective, and behavioral psychological phenomena in work and organizational settings. These phenomena can occur at individual, group, organizational, or cultural levels, and in various work settings such as business, education, training, health, service, government, or military institutions. The journal welcomes submissions from both public and private sector organizations, for-profit or nonprofit. It publishes several types of articles, including:
1.Rigorously conducted empirical investigations that expand conceptual understanding (original investigations or meta-analyses).
2.Theory development articles and integrative conceptual reviews that synthesize literature and generate new theories on psychological phenomena to stimulate novel research.
3.Rigorously conducted qualitative research on phenomena that are challenging to capture with quantitative methods or require inductive theory building.