Designing a Standardized Test Battery to Assess Dexterity

Abstract

Though numerous investigators have studied the impairing effects of protective hand-wear on manual dexterity, no standardized test battery has yet been developed for this purpose. In designing such a battery for the U.S. Air Force, a large number of commercially available tests were screened; candidate tests were then more carefully scrutinized, tried out on subjects and, in some cases, modified as a result of the preliminary trials. Considerations which warrant particular attention in selecting and refining candidate tests from a large field include: ease of administration, scoring procedures, number of practice trials required to control learning effects, types of subjects used, duration and order of test presentation. Further refinement could result in a definitive test battery which would streamline the work of future investigators in this field, and would make possible the comparative analysis of results.