U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences

Grit, hardiness and resilience are important character factors that can have potent downstream impact on many leadership and physical performance metrics. All three factors were analyzed in a larger study, however only grit is reported here. Coachability, character and overall Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) performances are important indicators of leadership potential or ability. PURPOSE: To evaluate the impact of grit on coachability/character parameters and overall physical performance measures of U.S. service academy cadets and Army officers. METHODS: Analysis of variance (ANOVA) of 105 participants (78 men, 27 women) investigated specific individual performance metrics; Duckworth Grit; (12-question scale with total grit tertile criterion point levels of high, moderate, low) Johnson’s short Coachability scale; {Total (CT), Comfort (CC), Development (CD), Acceptance (CA)} a select set of character attributes that reflect both the building blocks of character and attributes associated with an Army leader’s character, and raw physical performance measures. RESULTS: The top grit group was significantly higher (p < 0.02) compared to the bottom grit group in CT, CC, CA, (Cohen’s large effect) CD, (medium effect) character moral efficacy (large effect) and humility (small effect). Additionally, the top grit group was significantly higher in performances of ACFT total score; smaller subset (n = 55), dead lift, power throw, sprint drag and carry (Cohen’s d medium effect) while the ACFT push-ups had a large effect via Cohen’s d. CONCLUSION: Higher grit measures were related to more coachability, enhanced character attributes and a higher score in four of six ACFT events. Working to increase grit, hardiness and overall resilience through training and competitive events appears to enhance overall factors important for leadership roles and physical performance demands of military personnel.

BackgroundBody mass is the primary metabolic compartment related to a vast number of clinical indices and predictions. The extent to which skeletal muscle (SM), a major body mass component, varies between people of the same sex, weight, height, and age is largely unknown. The current study aimed to explore the magnitude of muscularity variation present in adults and to examine if variation in muscularity associates with other body composition and metabolic measures.MethodsMuscularity was defined as the difference (residual) between a person's actual and model‐predicted SM mass after controlling for their weight, height, and age. SM prediction models were developed using data from a convenience sample of 492 healthy non‐Hispanic (NH) White adults (ages 18–80 years) who had total body SM and SM surrogate, appendicular lean soft tissue (ALST), measured with magnetic resonance imaging and dual‐energy X‐ray absorptiometry, respectively; residual SM (SMR) and ALST were expressed in kilograms and kilograms per square meter. ALST mass was also evaluated in a population sample of 8623 NH‐White adults in the 1999–2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Associations between muscularity and variation in the residual mass of other major organs and tissues and resting energy expenditure were evaluated in the convenience sample.ResultsThe SM, on average, constituted the largest fraction of body weight in men and women up to respective BMIs of 35 and 25 kg/m2. SM in the convenience sample varied widely with a median of 31.2 kg and an SMR inter‐quartile range/min/max of 3.35 kg/−10.1 kg/9.0 kg in men and 21.1 kg and 2.59 kg/−7.2 kg/7.5 kg in women; per cent of body weight as SM at 25th and 75th percentiles for men were 33.1% and 39.6%; corresponding values in women were 24.2% and 30.8%; results were similar for SMR indices and for ALST measures in the convenience and population samples. Greater muscularity in the convenience sample was accompanied by a smaller waist circumference (men/women: P < 0.001/=0.085) and visceral adipose tissue (P = 0.014/0.599), larger liver (P = 0.065/<0.001), kidneys (P = 0.051/<0.009), and bone mineral (P < 0.001/<0.001), and larger magnitude resting energy expenditure (P < 0.001/<0.001) than predicted for the same sex, age, weight, and height.ConclusionsMuscle mass is the largest body compartment in most adults without obesity and is widely variable in mass across people of similar body size and age; and high muscularity is accompanied by distinct body composition and metabolic characteristics. This previously unrecognized heterogeneity in muscularity in the general population has important clinical and research implications.

Abstract It is common practice to rely on a convenience sample of subject matter experts (SMEs) when developing scoring keys for situational judgment tests (SJTs). However, the defining characteristics of what constitutes a SME are often ambiguous and inconsistent. Sampling SMEs can also impose considerable costs. Other research fields have adopted crowdsourcing methods to replace or reproduce judgments thought to require subject matter expertise. Therefore, we conducted the current study to compare crowdsourced scoring keys to SME‐based scoring keys for three SJTs designed for three different job domains: Medicine, Communication, and Military. Our results indicate that scoring keys derived from crowdsourced samples are likely to converge with keys based on SME judgment, regardless of test content ( r = .88 to .94 between keys). We observed the weakest agreement among individual MTurk and SME ratings for the Medical SJT (classification consistency = 61%) relative to the Military and Communication SJTs (80% and 85%). Although general mental ability and conscientiousness were each related to greater expert similarity among MTurk raters, the average crowd rating outperformed nearly all individual MTurk raters. Using randomly‐drawn bootstrapped samples of MTurk ratings in each of the three samples, we found that as few as 30–40 raters may provide adequate estimates of SME judgments of most SJT items. These findings suggest the potential usefulness of crowdsourcing as an alternative or supplement to SME‐generated scoring keys.

The U.S. Army sought to develop capabilities that allow for the automated or semi-automated, with greatly reduced human involvement, creation of tests and assessments. In recognizing the potential for an assessment approach that goes beyond multiple-choice, the Army chose our team to introduce and evaluate automated capabilities to author concept mapping-based assessments. This paper describes our initial approaches toward introducing efficiencies into the authoring process for concept map-based assessments. We are developing and evaluating methods to automatically generate concept maps from a knowledge domain and convert the maps into assessments for formative and summative purposes. Our initial work has sought to overcome challenges as we introduced artificial intelligence into the authoring process. In this paper, we describe our emergent approach and the challenges we have faced in seeking efficiencies in the conversion of text to concept maps.

ABSTRACT Given recent changes and transitions occurring within the US military, it is imperative – now more than ever – that leaders find a way to leverage demographic and functional diversity in their units to support mission effectiveness. Academic researchers have found that fostering a climate for inclusion, where all individuals feel like they are fairly treated, valued, and included, can maximize the benefits of diversity, while minimizing potential disadvantages. However, no research has systematically explored what it means to assess and develop a climate for inclusion in the military context. The current research employs a multi-study approach comprised of both qualitative and quantitative methods to understand how a climate for inclusion manifests itself within the military, how to assess it, and the factors that contribute to inclusive environments. Across the three studies, over 700 US Army Soldiers provided input via focus groups or surveys, resulting in a 16-item climate for inclusion measure representing two dimensions – horizontal social inclusion and vertical information inclusion. This research, and the resulting climate for inclusion measure, provides the foundation that military leaders need to effectively leverage diversity in their units to yield performance improvements.

Effective teamwork in an initially leaderless group requires a high level of collective leadership emerging from dynamic interactions among group members. Leader emergence is a crucial topic in collective leadership, yet it is challenging to investigate as the problem context is typically highly complex and dynamic. Here, we explore leadership emergence and leadership perception by means of computational simulations whose assumptions and parameters were informed by empirical research and human-subject experiments. Our agent-based model describes the process of group planning. Each agent is assigned with three key attributes: talkativeness, intelligence, and credibility. An agent can propose a suggestion to modify the group plan as a speaker or respond and evaluate others’ suggestions and leadership as a listener. Simulation results suggested that agents with high values of talkativeness, intelligence, and credibility tended to be perceived as leaders by their peers. Results also showed that talkativeness may be the most significant and instantaneous predictor for leader emergence of the three investigated attributes: talkativeness, intelligence, and credibility. In terms of group performance, smaller groups may outperform larger groups regarding their problem-solving ability in the beginning, but their performance tends to be of no significant difference in a long run. These results match the empirical literature and offer a mechanistic, operationalized description of the collective leadership processes.

It is common practice to rely on a convenience sample of subject matter experts (SMEs) when developing a scoring key for situational judgment tests (SJTs). However, the defining characteristics of what constitutes a SME are often ambiguous and inconsistent across studies. Other research fields have adopted crowdsourcing methods to replace or reproduce judgments thought to require subject matter expertise. Therefore, we conducted the current study to compare crowdsourced scoring keys to SME-based scoring keys for three SJTs in different domains, each varying in job-relatedness. Our results indicate that scoring keys derived from crowdsourced samples are likely to converge with keys based on SME judgment, regardless of test content (correlations ranging from r = .88 to .94). We observed the weakest agreement among individual MTurker and SME ratings for the more job-specific Medical SJT (classification consistency = 61%) but the aggregate scoring keys remained highly correlated. We observed stronger agreement in response option rankings for the Military and Communication SJTs (80% and 85%), which were both designed to require less procedural knowledge. Although general mental ability and conscientiousness were each related to greater expert similarity among MTurkers, the average crowd rating outperformed nearly all individual MTurk raters. Based on an analysis of randomly-drawn bootstrapped samples of MTurker ratings in each of the three samples, we found that as few as 30-40 raters may provide adequate estimates of SME judgments of most SJT items. We hope that these findings help inspire others to consider using crowdsourcing methods as an alternative to SMEs.

ABSTRACTThe history of vocational interests shows that these measures have great promise for use in job assignment, suggesting that individuals will be more satisfied and successful in their job when they are doing work that interests them. Recent research has provided empirical support for these predictions and demonstrated that the match between an individual’s interests and his or her work activities is positively related to job performance and negatively related to attrition. Building on these positive empirical findings, the U.S. Army Research Institute is investigating vocational interest measures for personnel job assignment. Person-job fit is very important in a context such as the U.S. Army, where applicants have over 140 military occupational specialties from which to choose. This paper begins by reviewing evidence for the validity of interests and discussing how vocational interest measures may be used for assigning Soldiers in a military context followed by our recent research to develop a new measure of vocational interests to improve the process of matching Soldiers to military occupational specialties. We will conclude with the next steps for this research and potential paths of implementation.

The majority of studies designed to assess cross-cultural emotion perception use a choice-from-array task in which participants are presented with brief emotion stories and asked to choose between target and foil cues. This task has been widely criticized, evoking a lively and prolonged debate about whether it inadvertently helps participants to perform better than they otherwise would, resulting in the appearance of universality. In 3 studies, we provide a strong test of the hypothesis that the classic choice-from-array task constitutes a potent source of context that shapes performance. Participants from a remote small-scale (the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania) and 2 urban industrialized (China and the United States) cultural samples selected target vocalizations that were contrived for 6 non-English, nonuniversal emotion categories at levels significantly above chance. In studies of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise, above chance performance is interpreted as evidence of universality. These studies support the hypothesis that choice-from-array tasks encourage evidence for cross-cultural emotion perception. We discuss these findings with reference to the history of cross-cultural emotion perception studies, and suggest several processes that may, together, give rise to the appearance of universal emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).