History of the Ball Aptitude Battery

At the beginning, our focus was on item development and on making decisions about what tests would be included in the battery. This was the era of paper-and-pencil testing, manual timing, and hand scoring. The BAB evolved as new item content was created for each test, data was collected on each test and the full battery from various samples, and scoring algorithms were developed and refined.

Two seminal longitudinal studies (“L1” and “L2”) were conducted to address issues related to standardization, reliability, and validity of the battery. The type of data that was collected included extensive biographical and outcome data (e.g., demographics, high school activities, achievement scores) to demonstrate the requisite scientific standards for aptitude testing. This included documentation of BAB test-retest reliability, construct and criterion-related validity, and stability of measurement over time.

Other early development activities included the addition of new measurements and job analysis investigations in order to establish a scientific basis for norms and the use of the battery in applications ranging from business and industry to career counseling. Looking back over time, it’s remarkable that all of this work was conducted manually using a scientific calculator to derive results.

During this phase, the Foundation analyzed BAB data collected from an increasing number of diverse samples, and established a growing number of occupational norms. Additionally, follow-up studies were conducted to collect data on the seminal L1 and L2 studies.

During this phase of development, the Ball Aptitude Battery was used in two settings:

• Business and industry for selection. The business and industry application required an additional form so that the items used in the selection process were secured and not available to the general public.
• Community career guidance. Our early (and ongoing) use of aptitudes in career guidance is an extension of the science and practice methodology that the Foundation is known for.

During this period the Foundation engaged in a variety of projects that enabled the collection of data on the BAB. Some of this research grew from an interest in reducing test administration time. Neuman and Briggs (1996) conducted item-level analyses on longer BAB forms, and the resulting subtests contained appropriate item content that satisfied the same psychometric standards established for other versions of the BAB (e.g., reasonably high reliability of .70 and above, high correlation with longer forms, etc.).

The shortened BAB facilitated the development of a scaled and scannable product to be used in the high school market. Significant work went into ensuring that the standards of the initial 3-hour paper-and-pencil BAB were retained in a new, 2-hour scannable format. In addition to saving an hour in administration time, the scannable format reduced the time needed to generate reports due to the elimination of hand-scoring. This allowed for mass, scalable report generation.

It was during this phase that the Ball Career System (BCS) was developed and introduced in 1998. The development of this product included an occupational crosswalk (the Aptitude Pattern Indicator), into the Occupational Aptitude Patterns map, the precursor to O*NET. The Aptitude Pattern Indicator was an aptitude-based map of the workplace that connected a profile of BAB scores to 12 highlighted occupational clusters (Barton, 1998; Carson et al., 1999, Ball Career System™ Technical Manual, 2002).

It was also during this era that a national norm study was conducted on 9th and 10th grade students. The data from this study resulted in an extension of construct and criterion-related validity support for the BAB (Ball Career System™ Technical Manual, 2002).

During this developmental phase, the Foundation migrated the shortened version of the aptitude battery from scantron administration to client-side computerized self-administration. Significant effort was invested into updating items from the last twenty-plus years, increasing the range of difficulty in items, and selecting items based on best psychometric performance.

In 2002, a national norm study was conducted on this new version of the Ball Aptitude Battery to ensure that our high standards were retained and to expand upon the age range of our norm sample. The net result of this work was an automated delivery, scoring, and reporting platform for the Ball Aptitude Battery.

During this time, the Foundation, in conjunction with Michigan State University, developed a statistically-based crosswalk between a profile of BAB scores and an O*NET-based world of work taxonomy. This prototype is still in development, but a description of this work can be found in Converse et al. (2004).

From 2005 to 2012, the Ball Aptitude Battery has been integrated into an automated scoring and reporting system that is compatible with HTML5-based standards for administration using popular browsers. The shortened version of the BAB is now accessible to anyone, anywhere, at any time.