This study is a construct validation of a profession-focused personality questionnaire (PQ), based on the Big Five, and developed for a military population and military context. The sample (N = 363) consisted of participants selected for international services in the Swedish Armed Forces. The structure of the PQ was modeled by means of confirmatory factor analysis, and its convergent validity was tested against the Five Factor Personality Inventory (FFPI) (Hendricks, Hofstee, & de Raad, 1999, 2000) and the Single-Item Measures of Personality (SIMP) (Woods & Hampson, 2005) as correlations. The emergent structure of the PQ – 41 items and 7 aspects – showed good internal consistency and acceptable convergent validity with both criterion instruments. The only nonconvergence was found between the Agreeableness aspect of the PQ, Concern for Others, and Agreeableness of the SIMP, most likely because of the broader SIMP factor. The structure of PQ was tested on a new sample (N = 274) and was found stable regarding the factor loadings and the relations between the factors. While the PQ needs to be investigated further, it seems as if it may become a useful tool in the research of military teams and contexts.

Vocabulary tests, part of most test batteries of general intellectual ability, measure both verbal and general ability. Newly developed techniques for confirmatory factor analysis of dichotomous variables make it possible to analyze the influence of different abilities on the performance on each item. In the testing procedure of the Computerized Swedish Enlistment test battery, eight different subtests of a new vocabulary test were given randomly to subsamples of a representative sample of 18-year-old male conscripts (N = 9001). Three central dimensions of a hierarchical model of intellectual abilities, general (G), verbal (Gc'), and spatial ability (Gv') were estimated under different assumptions of the nature of the data. In addition to an ordinary analysis of covariance matrices, assuming linearity of relations, the item variables were treated as categorical variables in the Mplus program. All eight subtests fit the hierarchical model, and the items were found to load about equally on G and Gc'. The results also indicate that if nonlinearity is not taken into account, the G loadings for the easy items are underestimated. These items, moreover, appear to be better measures of G than the difficult ones. The practical utility of the outcome for item selection and the theoretical implications for the question of the origin of verbal ability are discussed.