Pretraining Correlates of Trainfire Marksmanship

Abstract

514 entering West Point cadets were studied to determine whether prior weapons experience, intelligence, or questionnaire responses concerning their parents' or their own attitudes toward weapons were related to subsequent “Trainfire” rifle marksmanship scores. Confidence in firing ability was found to be a limited, yet best, single predictor of range firing scores. Cadet and parental attitudes toward weapons and prior firing experience were also correlated with range firing scores. Correlations of experience with range scores were lower than those in previously reported studies, and intelligence was not an effective predictor for this population. Possible effects of response sets and unreliability of the measures on the results are considered.