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During the second World War psychological methods of personnel selection were applied in the British armed forces on an unprecedented scale, and this book is an attempt to give an account of the procedures that were used and the results that were obtained. The book has a further aim which is to demonstrate in what way the experience that was gained in wartime can be adapted to the educational and industrial purposes of civilian life. It is very doubtful, however, whether the industrialist, for example, will find much appeal in this handbook. For whatever the aim of the authors may have been, the book is in effect little more than a compilation of the methods that were used in the various arms of the services and as such might be of interest to the statistician and the vocational psychologist.
There is one chapter which may be of more general interest, particularly at the present time, and that is the chapter in which the work of the War Office Selection Boards is described. The function of these Boards was to select potential officers, and their methods excited interest and criticism both in army and civilian circles. A serious attempt was made to study the whole problem of 'leadership' and it was in this vitally important matter that the psychiatrist and the psychologist made a valuable contribution. The group methods which were employed and the principles that underlay those methods of testing and observation are in themselves