FAA Office of Aerospace Medicine
Civil Aerospace Medical Institute

Report No: DOT/FAA/AM-61/01

Title and Subtitle: Problems in air traffic management: I. Longitudinal prediction of effectiveness of air traffic controllers.

Report Date: December 1961

Authors: Trites DK.

Abstract: Current (1961) job performance evaluations and medical history data were obtained for 149 of 197 men trained in air traffic control work in 1956. Evaluations of psychological test and biographical data collected at the time they went through training indicate that:

1. Psychological tests can make a useful contribution to screening applicants for air traffic control work;
2. Instructors in the air traffic control school can make exceptionally valid predictions of job performance evaluations some years later;
3. Older trainees tended to receive poorer job performance ratings some years later than did their younger classmates;
4. Medical history information of the kind collected in this study is not predictable by the psychological tests which were used.

Key Words: air traffic controllers, achievement tests, aptitude tests, mathematical prediction, personality tests, statistical analysis.

No. of Pages: 13