A preliminary validation of the Regional Proficiency Assessment Tool (RPAT)

Regional proficiency is a multidimensional construct created by the Department of Defense (DoD) to characterize a person's knowledge of a region's social, economic, political, and linguistic features. The Regional Proficiency Assessment Tool (RPAT) was designed to capture the regional proficiency of the military workforce. The RPAT collects biographical self-report data (e.g., professional travel, language test scores) to provide military personnel with scores for each dimension of regional proficiency (e.g., study of a region, utility of language skills) for each of the different global regions. Cluster scores combine to render the overall ratings. In two studies, we provide evidence for the RPAT's construct validity. In Study 1, 44 military participants completed the RPAT and individual difference measures. Aggregated, person-level RPAT ratings and appropriate cluster scores were moderately positively associated with cultural intelligence (.35-.47), but unrelated with self-reported cognitive styles and the Big Five personality dimensions, except for negative correlations with neuroticism. In Study 2, 11 subject matter experts rated the estimated RP of individuals by several world regions via reading narrative biographical sketches. The aggregate of the expert ratings was strongly, positively associated with the RPAT ratings (M across regions = .72), and was moderately correlated with cultural intelligence (.38-.48). This finding suggests that the RPAT provides assessments in line with the best of current practice (individual expert heuristic judgments), and that cultural intelligence assessments cannot replace the RPAT. Future research can examine the validity of the RPAT across larger samples and using different types of validation.