Development Of The Core Competence Scale For Military Personnel

Objective:The aim of this study was to explore the core competence and develop the Core Competence Scale for Military Personnel, and examined the reliability and validity of this scale.Methods:By literature review, job analysis, open-ended inventory survey, Behavioral Event Interview, setting up theory scheme and compiling items, the Core Competence Scale for Military Personnel was developed. The initial scale has 9 subscales, that were dedication, applicability, psychological endurance, coping ability, emotion control, interpersonal skills, will power, problem-solving ability, leading ability, and 141 items. First of all,200 military men volunteered to the preliminary test. Based upon the statistical results of prelininary test, the first scale which be made up of 116 items was retained. Then,1400 military personnel were chosen by random cluster sampling, and tested with this scale, while 100 of them were screened into two groups in accordance with uniform standards by their squad leaders,65 of them were tested by Chinese Military Mental Health Scale(CMMHS) at the same time, and 50 of them were retested after two weeks, then 3500 health soldiers volunteered to complete the Core Competence Scale for Military Personnel. The reliability and validity were examined by Exploratory Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, item analysis, t test and Correlation Analysis.Results:According to the factor analysis results,7 factors which all be comprised of some competence components were extracted, named will power, coping ability, organizational leadership, dedication, interpersonal skills, emotion control, applicability, and there were 59 formal items and 6 lie items in the final scale when one lie factor was added. The result of item analysis showed that the correlation coefficients of every items scores and total scores were 0.307～0.641, and subjects with higher scale scores also had significantly higher scores in every factors and total scale than did the soldiers with lower scale scores. The test-retest correlation coefficients of total scale and subscales were 0.613～0.801 (P<0.01); the Cronbach'a coefficients were 0.633～0.946 (P<0.01);and the split-half correlation coefficients were 0.641～0.951 (P<0.01). Furthermore, the theoretical model of the scale was supported by the sample data, the fit indexes, such as GFI, AGFI, NFI and CFI of total scale were all over 0.9, and RMSEA was lower than 0.08. In addition, the correlation coefficients of factors were between 0.219 and 0.719 P<0.01), and the correlation coefficients between all factors and total scale were 0.590-0.866(P<0.01). The correlation was significant between this scale and CMMHS, moreover, the total score and all factor scores of outstanding group were significantly higher than those of the general group.Conclusion:It has preliminary completd the development of the Core Competence Scale for Military Personnel. Through a series of researches on the scale, it has proved that the scale possesses acceptable psychometrics properties on reliability and validity and proves to be applicable to Chinese military personnel in evaluating their core competence.