ASVAB and EQ and SQ Tests
Following on from a suggestion yesterday I thought I’d go and look at the ASVAB tests offered by the US Military. From what I understand these are aimed at seeing both whether you should think of joining the military and in the later stages, which part of it or what speciality to aim for.
In the spirit of risk taking and research for which this blog is justly famed I actually took part of the test myself. Apparently I have a great career ahead as a latrine orderly.
Actually, what I did was have a quick look through a set of test questions. The one part of it that I actually took seriously I got 14 out of 20 on. Not good, but then it was on ratios and percentages and I was trying to do it without a calculator or pen and paper. Just pure (and obviously faltering) brainpower.
That isn’t, however, what I take to be the important thing about this test though. This isn’t an aptitude career test at all. It’s a test of what you have already learned. The two are very different things. For example, asking me what is 20% of $600 doesn’t show very much about my aptitude for anything. It simply finds out whether I’ve been taught the basics of percentages. Yes, of course, a potential future employer would like to know whether I’ve been taught that, but this is a simple test of educational achievement.
An aptitude career test would be doing something very different indeed. Actually, you know, looking at your aptitude for a specific career in a test. Aptitude is not what you have already been taught. It is your innate ability at the sort of mental processes that this specific career might demand.
With our EQ and SQ (and to a lesser extent with basic IQ tests themselves) what is being looked at is your ability as a systemizer or empathizer. Certain careers demand more or less of each of those attributes, so that’s what we’re testing for. That’s why we call the EQSQ tests exactly that, aptitude career tests, and why we wouldn’t use the same description of the ASVAB.
[tags]free personality tests, IQ test, EQ, SQ, military, career choice, aptitude career test, ASVAB, military [/tags]
March 25th, 2006 at 12:25 am
Thanks for the clarification, Tim. I really appreciate the extra research. What strikes me as odd is this: The government describes it as a career aptitude test; the acronym, ASVAB, stands for Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. Is this misleading? Should they not be using this misnomer? I scored in the 98th percentile on the ASVAB, but when I took the SAT, it was more like the 80th. Is the test giving people a sense of false hope, or even worse: is the test just giving them bad advice about their potential careers?
I’m going to venture to say something controversial now, but the ASVAB is widely known to be administered in our public schools for the benefit of military recruitment, but many students think of it as a scientific test that will actually help them determine their career. LIke the EQ/SQ tests, does the ASVAB career aptitude test really have any academic footing to be justified as a required test in high school??? Should the Department of Defense really be swaying young peoples’ minds for their own recruitment purposes?
As you can see, I’m a bit of a peacenik hippie.
March 27th, 2006 at 7:37 pm
I’ll have more on this later. The first part of the test was as I describe. There’s another part that I need to look into.