Meta-Analysis of Personality Assessments as Predictors of Military Aviation Training Success

Abstract

Results from a meta-analysis of studies using personality constructs to predict military aviation training outcomes are reported. From the 26 studies that reported effects of personality as predictors of aviation training outcome, the constructs of neuroticism (K = 7), extroversion (K = 8), and anxiety (K = 4) appeared most frequently. Meta-analysis effects were derived using both random effects and artifact distribution model. Uncorrected effects from the random effects model produced the largest mean effect for neuroticism (r _meta = −.15), followed by extroversion (r _meta = .13), and anxiety (r _meta = −.11). Corrections for predictor reliability and range restriction produced the greatest increase in the validity coefficient for neuroticism (r_corr = −.25), implying more psychometrically reliable and sensitive instruments could substantially improve the predictive validity of personality assessments in aviation selection contexts. The results confirmed the hypothesis that neuroticism and its facet anxiety would be negatively related to training success, and that extroversion would share a positive relationship with training success in military aviation.

Notes

¹As one of the reviewers of this article noted, government technical reports might not be peer-reviewed in the traditional academic sense, but are nevertheless subjected to ample review and scrutiny by the military and government chain of command prior to public dissemination.

^aThe Neuroticism scale for this study represents high versus low scores and the associated odds ratio of failure, which was transformed to chi-square and ultimately from chi-square to r.

^bThe samples used to identify the base rate of training success could not be disaggregated, thus the combined sample was used as an estimate in both cases.

^cThe direction of the effect was reversed.

²A reviewer pointed out the difference between select-in and select-out factors in military aviation, noting that military samples should indeed possess a range restriction for neuroticism, a select-out factor, because U.S. Navy and Air Force flight surgeons are trained to identify and remove pathologically neurotic aviators, in the process applying the Navy term “not aeronautically adaptable” (NAA), or in the case of the Air Force, “adaptability rating for military aeronautics—unsatisfactory” (ARMA-Unsat.). On the other hand, extroversion, because of its positive association with aviation training outcomes, is more likely to function as a “select-in” variable within personnel selection and testing schemes, thus enhancing the range of this variable. What must also be considered is that flight surgeons typically do not figure into the training attrition decision until sometime after the aviation training begins, which raises the difficult-to-study issue of how self-selection for military aviation training affects the range of variability in personality domains such as extroversion and neuroticism.