TAPAS: Tailored Adaptive Personality Assessment System for Military Personnel

The Tailored Adaptive Personality Assessment System (TAPAS) was developed to assess personality factors for U.S. Army entry-level selection and classification. It measures up to 21 subdimensions of the Big Five personality factors and additional military-relevant traits using a computerized adaptive test (CAT) format. The system was authored by Fritz Drasgow and designed to be resistant to response faking for high-stakes enlistment testing.

Use Cases

• Training models for adaptive personality testing based on the described item response theory (IRT) framework.
• Analyzing resistance to 'faking good' in high-stakes assessments based on the balanced social desirability item design.
• Studying adverse impact on demographic groups based on the early operational test results mentioned.
• Developing selection algorithms for military roles based on the assessed personality subdimensions.

Strengths

• Designed to assess up to 21 subdimensions of the Big Five personality factors.
• Items are constructed with two statements balanced in social desirability to resist faking.
• Early operational test results indicated little adverse impact on females and minority groups.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The dataset license is closed, restricting open use and redistribution.

Provenance

Source

Fritz Drasgow

Collection Method

Developed for the U.S. Army using item response theory and computerized adaptive testing.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

United States (U.S. Army and Air Force applicants)