Physically Demanding Jobs

This report reviews the use and development of gender-neutral occupational performance standards in the military. GAO (1) discusses the military services' approaches to implementing gender-neutral performance standards and screening service members to ensure that they can meet the physical demands of their jobs, (2) discusses how the military services identified the extent to which service members had problems in accomplishing the physical demands of their jobs, and (3) evaluated the Air Force's implementation of its strength aptitude testing program.

GAO found that: (1) each service takes a different approach to screening members' physical fitness; (2) the Air Force is the only service that requires new recruits to take a strength aptitude test; (3) the Air Force uses the results to qualify individuals for their military occupations; (4) the services believe that their approaches to assigning members to physically demanding tasks are appropriate, because they receive few complaints from members about such tasks; (5) the services have little data to assess a member's capability to perform tasks; (6) the Army has systematically collected physical performance data since 1989; (7) the data show that at least 84 percent of the Army members had no problems in completing their tasks; (8) a 1994-1995 survey determined that 51 to 79 percent of members have no problem in completing physically demanding tasks; and (9) the validity of the Air Force's strength aptitude test is questionable because of concerns about the administration, accuracy, and relevance of the test's physical requirements.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone: