Project Talent

Project Talent was a large-scale, national survey of the abilities, aptitudes, inclinations, quality of life, and backgrounds of over 400,000 U.S. high school students (a 5% sample of all U.S. high school students at the time) undertaken in 1960.[1] Follow-up studies were undertaken at 1, 5, and 11 years after graduation.[2]

The study was conducted by the American Institutes for Research, led by John C. Flanagan, then a psychology professor at the University of Pittsburgh. It was initiated in 1957, in cooperation with the U.S. Office of Education (the precursor to the U.S. Department of Education), the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation.[3] Four hundred and forty thousand high school students were tested during a four-day series of exams in what Dr. Flanagan described as “the first scientifically planned national inventory of human talents.”[4]

Contents

Origins

The need for rapid mechanization at the entry of the U.S. into World War Two led to creativity in identifying talents and abilities, including the development of aptitude tests that “transformed bakers and brokers into pilots, bombardiers and navigators.” Rather than relying on traditional criteria such as level of education or IQ, the tests matched raw abilities to particular skill sets.[5]

The principal investigator was psychologist John C. Flanagan, who was at the time the head of the nonprofit organization the American Institutes for Research. In an interview with Time magazine, published August 24, 1962, he stated that his experience with the wartime exams had convinced him that many U.S. workers were miscast into the wrong profession. He described Project Talent as a mechanism to provide the data to help better understand and ultimately to overcome this problem.[6]

Design and methodology of the study

The study's stated goal was to obtain a comprehensive sampling of U.S. high school students, using a 5% survey (a survey of 5% of the total population of U.S. high school students in 1960). Sophisticated sampling was used to identify 1,353 public, private, and parochial schools of all sizes and geographic locations in the United States, with the objective of sampling youth from all conceivable backgrounds.[7]

The test took place over four half-day sessions, using 23 tests designed by the Project Talent staff, to measure abilities and aptitudes in language, mathematics, and reasoning ability. In addition, students filled out surveys on family background, health, current activities in and out of school, future career plans (including plans for college and military service), and family plans.[8]

Additionally, in an effort to report national norms for one complete age group (specifically 15-year-olds), the sample group of U.S. high school students was supplemented by a sample of 15-year-olds not in high school, including those still in lower grades, drop-outs, and graduates. This sub-sample was undertaken in 10% of the school districts in the sample.[9][10]

The study was designed as a comprehensive survey with longitudinal follow-up. In the original Project Talent documentation, the study was intended to follow students for 25 years after graduation, with the last follow-up to take place in 1988 (25 years after graduation of the 1960 9th-grade class).[11] In fact, follow-up studies took place at 1 year, 5 years, and 11 years after graduation.[12]

Follow-up studies

Follow-up studies took place 1 year, 5 years, and 11 years after participants graduated from high school, using sub-samples of the original 377,000 participants. Thus, the most recent data is from 1974 (published 1975), 11 years after graduation of the 1960 9th-graders.[13] A 20-year follow-up to begin in 1980 was planned but not completed.[14]

Flanagan described seven specific reasons for the follow-up studies: Inventory the pool of available talent for training in science, engineering, and other professional fields; assess the relationships among aptitudes, interests, and other factors; determine the extent to which lack of interest or motivation limit the development of individuals' talents; identify the main factors affecting vocational choice; identify predictors of creativity and productivity; assess the effectiveness of various types of educational experience, and provide a basis for developing procedures for realizing individuals' potential.[15]

Data products

From the over 400,000 students tested in 1960, usable data was obtained on 377,000 individuals: ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth graders and a sample of 15-year-olds not in high school. The results produced 3,783 data records (about 100 megabytes) of information per student.[16] The data was originally recorded on 5 million punched cards but later upgraded to a flat file and code book format.[17] The 1960 sample includes 19,826 twins and other multiple birth children and 28,363 veterans.[18]

Etymology

In the 1960 documentation, Project Talent is usually written with “talent” not capitalized, but occasionally fully capitalized, although no acronym is ever described.[19][20] It is not clear whether the authors intended to create, after the fact, an acronym for TALENT, or whether this was merely an inconsistently applied stylistic choice. Later documentation, especially university collections warehousing Project Talent data and scientific articles, is also inconsistent in presenting the project in some places as “Project Talent” and in others as “Project TALENT.”[21][22] In this article, “Project Talent” is used, to be consistent with the majority of original use and to avoid any confusion with those groups or organizations that use “TALENT” as an acronym.

Scientific papers citing Project Talent data

A comprehensive list of all scientific papers citing Project Talent data numbers far into the thousands and is beyond the scope of this article. A sample is provided below. Of note, despite the fact that decades have passed since the last data was collected in the study, the uniqueness of the data is shown in that it is still being cited in peer-reviewed scientific literature published in 2009.[23]

References

  1. ^ Encyclopedia of Special Education: A Reference for the Education of Children, Adolescents, and Adults with Disabilities and Other Exceptional Individuals, P-Z, pps 1644-1645; Ed. Reynolds, Cecil R and Fletcher-Janzen, Elaine; John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2007. http://books.google.com/books?id=7rvZT5J3osYC&pg=PA1645&lpg=PA1645&dq=%22project+talent%22&source=bl&ots=SC_8DwkXN8&sig=mNFh9Mce-dOMRvx1DV57vgNybhc&hl=en&ei=zNxpSsyKN4XENvj6-M8M&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#v=onepage&q=%22project%20talent%22&f=false
  2. ^ The Project Talent Data Bank: A Handbook, Flanagan, John C. et al, 1972. American Institutes for Research in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto, CA. Full text at http://www.eric.ed.gov:80/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/37/71/17.pdf
  3. ^ Project Talent, Monograph No. 1; Flanagan, John C. et al., University of Pittsburgh & the U.S. Office of Education, Project No. 566, December, 1960, p. ii.
  4. ^ Education: Talent Census, Time Magazine, Friday, Aug. 24, 1962. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,896531,00.html
  5. ^ ibid.
  6. ^ ibid.
  7. ^ Project Talent, Monograph No. 1; Flanagan, John C. et al., University of Pittsburgh & the U.S. Office of Education, Project No. 566, December 1960, Chapter I, Rationale for the Study.
  8. ^ The Project Talent Data Bank Handbook, Wise, Lauress L, McLaughlin Donald H. and Steel, Lauri, March 1977, Revised March 1979, American Institutes for Research, Palo Alto, CA, pps. 2-3.
  9. ^ Project Talent, Monograph No. 1; Flanagan, John C. et al., University of Pittsburgh & the U.S. Office of Education, Project No. 566, December 1960, Chapter II, Background & Planning.
  10. ^ The identification, development and utilization of human talents, studies of a complete age group: age 15, Shaycroft, Marion F., University of Pittsburgh, 1963, Reprinted 1968.
  11. ^ Project Talent, Monograph No. 1; Flanagan, John C. et al., University of Pittsburgh & the U.S. Office of Education, Project No. 566, December 1960, Chapter II, Background & Planning.
  12. ^ Project Talent Data Bank, Flanagan, John C. et al. 1979. ED287905, machine-readable data files. http://www.eric.ed.gov:80/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED287905&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED287905
  13. ^ ibid.
  14. ^ The Project Talent Data Bank Handbook, Wise, Lauress L, McLaughlin Donald H. and Steel, Lauri, March 1977, Revised March 1979, American Institutes for Research, Palo Alto, CA, p.71.
  15. ^ Project Talent Public Use File, 1960-1976. Flanagan, John C., et al. Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. Available online by subscription. http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/07823
  16. ^ Project Talent Data Bank, Flanagan, John C. American Institutes for Research, 1976. Available through Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research, http://ciser.cornell.edu/ASPs/search_athena.asp?IDTITLE=505.
  17. ^ Data Products, ProjectTalent.org, http://www.projecttalent.org/content/project-talent-data-sets
  18. ^ Ibid.
  19. ^ Project Talent, Monograph No. 1; Flanagan, John C. et al., University of Pittsburgh & the U.S. Office of Education, Project No. 566, December, 1960.
  20. ^ Types of Tests in Project Talent: Standardized Aptitude and Achievement Tests (Monograph No. 9); Dailey, J. T. United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of Education, OE-25014, Washington D.C., 1961.
  21. ^ Project Talent, Monograph No. 1; Flanagan, John C. et al., University of Pittsburgh & the U.S. Office of Education, Project No. 566, December, 1960
  22. ^ http://openlibrary.org/a/OL171323A/University_of_Pittsburgh._Project_Talent_Office.
  23. ^ Science Needs Kids With Vision; Holden, Constance. Science, 325(5945), 1190-1191, 2009.

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