Relationships Between an Impromptu Speech and Criteria of Military Success ¹

Abstract

Summary This report is one in a series describing the evaluation of members of two Air Force Officer Candidate School (OCS) classes by means of assessment techniques administered during a three and one‐half day period at the beginning of each class. This paper is concerned with relationships between individual performance on a five‐minute Impromptu Speech problem, criteria of OCS success, and other measures of military aptitude employed in the assessment. The results of the study indicate that the Impromptu Speech test can be administered and scored by inexperienced personnel with a minimum of training, and it requires only about ten minutes of time per subject. Scores yielded by the Impromptu Speech test are satisfactorily reliable and sufficiently valid against later criteria of performance to permit fairly efficient screening if used as a selection device. Relationships between the Speech scores and other assessment measures provide estimates of its construct validity and indicate that persons who do well on the Speech test are those with relatively high Verbal Fluency, Effective Intelligence, and Social Maturity.

Relationships Between Physical Proficiency and Measures of Leadership and Personality1

“…2. Impromptu Speech Score (estimated reliability of .86) based on performance during a five-minute speech which the subject had had five minutes to prepare (19).…”