Multi-Tasking Assessment for Personnel Selection and Development

The primary objective of Phase I will be to design a practical, reliable, and valid computer-based assessment of the ability to perform well in a different types of multi-tasking environments, primarily those encountered by first-term Army enlistees. Formal development and validation of the measure will then take place in Phase II. The first objective in Phase I is to conduct a literature review to extend our current model of individual difference variables that predict multi-tasking performance. The second is to analyze the defining characteristics of several multi-tasking jobs in order to create a typology of MT environments that matches environmental characteristics to requisite cognitive and non-cognitive individual difference variables. The third objective will be to design a measurement approach that taps these critical individual difference variables. The fourth objective will be to develop studies to develop and validate the measurement approach. Phase I products will include a model of individual difference variables that predict multi-tasking ability; a model of different types of multi-tasking environments and the associated skills and abilities required to perform well in those environments the test design, the Phase II study design, and an optional prototype of the test.