Gender and Performance in Naval Aviation Training
Abstract
Women have played an important role in naval aviation since their entry into naval aviation training as pilots in 1973 and as naval flight officers in 1979. Heightened by the Congressional debates over women in combat, questions are being raised regarding equitable selection, fair treatment in training, and equality of opportunity. This paper presents a brief historical perspective of the rationale and research related to women in military aviation, examines selection and training data of 13,755 men and 421 women who entered naval aviation training from 1984 to 1991, and addresses the issues of equitable selection and fairness in naval aviation training. Analyses of the data include descriptive statistics and I tests to compare male/female performance on selection tests and preflight training grades, a test of equal proportions and a chi-square test to assess differences in attrition, correlation and regression analyses to determine the significance of relationships between selection test measures and performance in preflight training. Analysis of gender differences indicated that women had significantly better scores than men on the aviation selection tests which are predictive of preflight academic training performance (p<.Ol). Their performance grades during the pre-flight academic training, however, were significantly lower than that of men (p<.Ol). Attrition rates and as of attrition did not differ. Implications of the findings and future directions for research are suggested.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 17, 1992
- Accession Number
- ADP006957
Entities
People
- Annette G. Baisden
Organizations
- Naval Aerospace Medical Institute