Development of a Cyber/Information Technology Knowledge Test for Military Enlisted Technical Training Qualification

We Found Them! The Practitioner Role in Expanding the Generalizability of Findings in I-O Psychology

“…Jobs studied and reported on as part of Project A included military-specific jobs such as infantry but also included jobs with substantial nonmilitary duties, such as engineers, mechanics, food service workers, medical specialists, and carpentry/masonry specialists. The U.S. Army still conducts personnel research using purposive sampling across/within the range of needed jobs, including the development of measures of personality (Stark et al, 2014), information technology knowledge (Trippe, Moriarty, Russell, Carretta, & Beatty, 2014), and work interests (Ingerick & Rumsey, 2014). Notably, a recent National Academy of Sciences report outlined a future basic science research agenda that could be conducted in partnership with the U.S. Army (National Research Council, 2015) and would likely have implications for non-Army jobs filled by workers. Research supporting the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) was conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and sampled across 515 validity studies for jobs ranging across the complexity spectrum, including many in jobs underrepresented by the current literature.…”

Identifying Dimensions of Cyber Aptitude

“…These tests are useful for separating applicants who have the appropriate background from those who do not. These sorts of tests include commercial certifications, like the Certified Ethical Hacker exam, and the Air Force's Information/Communications Technology Literacy (ICTL) test, which is currently being validated to become a component of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB; Trippe et al, 2014).…”

“…Guilford and Lacey argued that in the case of informational tests, knowledge could come from any mixture of three factors: interest, aptitude, or opportunity, and thus that tests of job-specific information were a good measure of both interest and aptitude in that area. This approach is also being taken by the Air Force ICTL team, who have developed a knowledge test that predicts performance in cyber training (Trippe et al, 2014).…”

“…These constructs include several measures of reasoning and verbal ability. Table 1 shows the list of constructs we identified for this project, alongside the list of abilities identified by subject matter experts in Trippe et al (2014), and a selected list of cognitive competency areas taken from the NICE framework. The main divergence between our model and the other lists comes in the realm of written and verbal expression, which we had assumed would be assessed either by the ASVAB (in the case of military applicants) or in the interview process (in the case of non-military applicants).…”

“…This challenge steadily increases with advances in technology and sophistication of cyber adversaries. Currently, the best approaches to assessing potential cybersecurity hires involve testing applicants' knowledge of cybersecurity concepts and procedures (Trippe, Moriarty, Russell, Carretta, & Beatty, 2014). Because cybersecurity is an expanding field, however, some applicants who could potentially perform cybersecurity jobs at a high level may not have the required background knowledge when they apply.…”