Identifying and Assessing Interaction Knowledges, Skills, and Attributes for Objective Force Soldiers

Identifying and Assessing Interaction Knowledge, Skills, and Attributes for Future Force Soldiers

“…contract entitled "Identifying and Assessing Interaction Knowledges, Skills, and Aptitudes (KSAs) for Objective Force Soldiers." The purpose of the Phase I project was to identify the interpersonal KSAs that will be required of the Soldier of the future, and to identify or develop innovative concepts for measuring these KSAs for use in selection and assignment applications (Bowden, Laux, Keenan, & Knapp, 2003). This chapter describes the importance of this research, details the findings from Phase I of this effort, provides an overview of the assessments used in Phase II, and describes the order of the remainder of the report.…”

“…The list of possible measures included commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) personality instruments, e.g., NEO Personality Inventory or 16PF Questionnaire, and measures designed for previous ARI projects, i.e., Maximizing 21 st Century Noncommissioned Officer Performance (NCO21; Knapp et al, 2002) and new Predictors for Selecting and Assigning Future Army Soldiers (Select21; Knapp, Sager & Tremble, 2005), 1 as well as measures such as structured interviews and role plays that would need to be developed in Phase II. Our list of possible assessment methods is shown in Figure 2 (Bowden et al, 2003). …”

“…One of the biggest challenges in developing the taxonomy was that interpersonal skills have a high degree of overlap with one another. Our task was to identify KSAs that were distinct enough to be considered independent and measurable and to make sure we captured the important facets of each (Bowden et al, 2003). The approach we took was to break complex KSAs, such as oral communication, into some of their component parts (e.g., active listening and nonverbal skills).…”

“…The Phase I effort (Bowden, Laux, Knapp, & Keenan, 2003) identified a set of interpersonal skills and associated measures important for effective performance in the Army of the future. Having identified these assessment methods and the knowledges, skills and attributes (KSAs), the goal of the Phase II effort was to develop fully the assessment devices and conduct research aimed at validating the assessments' ability to predict Soldiers' interpersonal performance.…”