Acceptance and Use of Job Performance Aids within an Integrated Personnel Systems Approach

Job performance aids (JPAs) were developed within an integrated personnel system framework in order to determine if JPAs (1) are accepted by technicians with low and high levels of aptitude and (2) are used as a source for maintenance information during task performance. The Enlisted Personnel Individualized Career System (EPICS) is an integrated personnel systems approach with emphasis on (JPAs) that incorporates advances made in many people related research and development areas. The goals of EPICS are reduced front-end training, increased relevance of formal training through early job assignment and distributed training, individualized career advancement, and improved personnel utilization. Job design, JPAs, and training modules were the major components used to achieve the EPICS goals. Two types of JPAs were developed: (1) a completely integrated pictorial/text format in which frequent use of pictorials allows the user to focus on the pictorial and use the text to supplement the pictorial, and (2) a more conventional format in which text was supported by pictorials when necessary. JPA use and acceptance were measured by two different types of questionnaires. For acceptance, JPAs were preferred over conventional documentation for at least some first time (both scheduled and unscheduled) and infrequent tasks by 77–81% of the respondents. When grouped according to electronics aptitude, however, a greater number of lower electronics aptitude personnel preferred JPAs when compared to the higher electronics aptitude personnel (67% vs. 38%). Data on how JPAs were actually used complement the acceptance data in that lower electronics aptitude personnel used JPAs more than the higher electronics aptitude personnel, 15% more for scheduled maintenance and 10% more for unscheduled maintenance. Similar results were found for a general aptitude measure. Although the JPAs were highly pictorial in format, there were no differences in JPA use according to reading level. Results are discussed in terms of how JPA design appears to be related to differential use by low and high aptitude technicians.