The effect of gender differences on the reliability of aptitude screening of aviation specialists

The Aim. This paper examines the problem of reliability of aptitude screening currently in place in commercial aviation in terms of its indiscriminate applicability to males and females. The task consisted in evaluating some professionally important qualities in males and females, who have successfully completed aptitude screening while being admitted to the aviation school, and identify the presence or absence of differences between the obtained results. For that purpose, a research was conducted that involved 60 third-year traffic controller students of the Saint Petersburg State University of Civil Aviation (35 males and 25 females).

Methods. The psychodiagnostic method included the Prognoz-1 and Prognoz-2 stress tolerance evaluation forms developed in the S.M. Kirov Military Medical Academy, H.J. Eysenck intellectual development test, A. Buss and A. Durkee hostility assessment forms. The authors’ earlier findings were also used. Statistical processing was performed using correlation analysis and Pearson’s chi-squared test.

Results. The analysis of psychodiagnostic findings has shown the absence of positive differences in the intellectual development of males and females in the observed group. In general, the intelligence of the study participants was sufficiently high (121.17 average IQ for males and 123.04 for females). The assessment of the stress tolerance of the surveyed group using two different variants of the Prognoz forms also has not identified any significant differences between males and females (stress tolerance of females is somewhat lower, than that of males, but the identified difference is obviously not crucial). However, both among males (1 person) and females (1 person) participants were identified, for whom the prediction per both diagnostic method was “unfavourable”. Positive differences between the examined males and females were identified in terms of tendency towards physical aggression (A. Buss and A. Durkee test).

Conclusions. The psychodiagnostic method used as part of this work have not identified fundamental gender differences. An exception is the tendency towards physical aggression. In females this indicator is clearly lower, though there are girls who display high aggressiveness. Most experimental subjects demonstrated high stress tolerance and sufficiently high level of intellectual development. And while the examined group does not display clear differences in IQ (there are reasons to believe that the larger is the surveyed group the less significant are the positive differences between males and females in terms of intellectual development), however, the trend of female aviation specialists having overall higher IQ can be observed. The research must continue, extending the range of assessment methods, including alternative approaches that do not involve personality inventories, while simultaneously evaluating the extent of professionally important psychological qualities of aviation specialists, yet not with respect to gender, but in accordance with a candidate’s identified gender type.

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