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Public Domain · 1918 · WWI

Army Alpha Form 6: Parallel form of Army Alpha

Form 6 of the 1918 Army Alpha. The Alpha was published in 5 parallel forms (5, 6, 7, 8, 9) to prevent recruits in adjacent testing groups from sharing answers. Form 6 has the same 8-subtest structure as Form 5 but with different specific items at each difficulty level. About 340,000 WWI recruits took Form 6.

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About the Army Alpha Form 6

The Army Alpha was published in five parallel forms (numbered 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 - the numbers 1-4 were skipped by convention) to allow rotation across testing groups. A recruit at one Army camp might take Form 5 while a recruit at the adjacent camp took Form 7. This prevented answer-sharing and made it possible to compare scores across camps.

All five forms share the same 8-subtest structure: Following Oral Directions, Arithmetic, Practical Judgment, Synonym-Antonym, Disarranged Sentences, Number Series, Analogies, Information. The same scoring conventions and time limits apply. The specific items at each difficulty level differ between forms, but the population norms are the same across all five.

We have built the interactive Army Alpha around Form 5 (the most-cited and most-completely-published form). Forms 6, 7, 8, 9 are described here for completeness; the actual items appear on pages 215-247 of the Yoakum/Yerkes 1920 volume.

About this interactive version: We have not built a separate interactive version for each of Forms 6, 7, 8, 9 - the items are similar in nature to Form 5 but differ in specific content. To take a different Form, see the original 1920 publication.

The 8 subtests

#1
Following Oral Directions Same 12-item oral-instructions format as Form 5.
Examiner Required
#2
Arithmetic 20 arithmetic problems, similar in difficulty progression to Form 5 but with different specific items.
Paper Test
#3
Practical Judgment 16 multiple-choice items measuring common-sense reasoning.
Paper Test
#4
Synonym-Antonym 40 word pairs.
Paper Test
#5
Disarranged Sentences 24 scrambled sentences.
Paper Test
#6
Number Series 20 number patterns.
Paper Test
#7
Analogies 40 word analogies.
Paper Test
#8
Information 40 general-knowledge multiple-choice items.
Paper Test

Source

All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:

Yoakum, C. S. & Yerkes, R. M. (1920). Army Mental Tests. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Public domain - US War Department work. Form 6 items appear on pages 215-222 of the Yoakum/Yerkes 1920 volume, with answer keys on pages 70-77. Read it on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/armymentaltests00yoak.

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