Army Locus of Control Scale (Army- LOC)

1. Abstract

The Army Locus of Control Scale (Army-LOC) is an aviation-specific psychometric instrument developed by David R. Hunter and John E. Stewart in 2009 under the auspices of the United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences. Designed specifically to assess generalized and domain-specific control beliefs within military rotary and fixed-wing aviators, the instrument addresses the distinct operational environments where personal agency, structural hierarchy, tactical fatalism, and mechanical contingencies intersect. The Army-LOC emerged from earlier foundations in generalized locus of control theory and aviation safety psychology, refining general constructs into actionable behavioral predictors of risk orientation, aeronautical decision-making, and flight safety compliance. Psychometrically, the instrument was evaluated both as a multidimensional six-component inventory comprising Luck, Externality, Internality, Accident Causality, Fate/Destiny, and Resignation, as well as an optimized dual-subscale operational instrument consisting of two core 15-item dimensions: the Internality Scale and the Externality Scale. Across broad validation samples of United States Army aviators, the instrument exhibits strong structural integrity and internal consistency reliability, yielding a Cronbach’s alpha of .83 for the 15-item Internality Scale and .92 for the 15-item Externality Scale, with the broader component breakdown demonstrating robust reliabilities across individual factors: Luck (α = .89), Externality (α = .87), Internality (α = .85), Accident Causality (α = .82), Fate (α = .81), and Resignation (α = .60). Responses are recorded on a five-point Likert-type response format ranging from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree. Criterion-related validation studies confirm that elevated internality scores predict enhanced procedural compliance, greater personal accountability for flight outcomes, and reduced hazardous event involvement, whereas elevated externality and fatalistic scores correlate significantly with higher risk tolerance, operational rationalization, and hazardous flight attitudes. This article delivers a comprehensive academic analysis of the Army-LOC, tracing its theoretical heritage, psychometric properties, factor structure, scoring algorithms, and specialized operational utility in military aviation psychology.

2. Keywords

Army Locus of Control Scale, Army-LOC, aviation psychology, internal locus of control, external locus of control, aeronautical decision-making, risk perception, flight safety, fatalism, military aviators

3. Authors

The Army Locus of Control Scale (Army-LOC) was constructed and validated by:

• David R. Hunter, Ph.D. — Formerly affiliated with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI) and the United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI). Contact: [email protected]. Dr. Hunter has authored foundational psychometric instruments in human factors, pilot risk perception, hazardous attitudes, and pilot judgment.
• John E. Stewart, Ph.D. — Affiliated with the United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI) Rotary-Wing Aviation Research Unit located at Fort Rucker (now Fort Novosel), Alabama. Dr. Stewart’s research focuses on military aviator selection, spatial orientation, flight simulator fidelity, and pilot cognitive performance.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Army Locus of Control Scale (Army-LOC) is to quantify the degree to which military aviation personnel perceive outcomes in high-consequence operational flight environments as being contingent upon their own personal behavior, preparation, and skill (internal locus of control) versus external forces such as chance, atmospheric conditions, mechanical failure, command oversight, or predetermined destiny (external locus of control). Military flight operations expose aviators to extreme operational volatility, degraded visual environments, severe tactical pressures, and complex socio-technical systems. In such environments, cognitive attributional style directly influences safety-critical behaviors, risk acceptance, cockpit communication, and adherence to standard operating procedures.

In civil aviation, general measures of locus of control, such as Julian B. Rotter’s seminal Internal-External Locus of Control Scale, frequently demonstrated limited criterion-related predictive validity when attempting to forecast domain-specific behaviors like flight incidents or emergency checklist execution. Generalized instruments capture broad existential beliefs that fail to engage the specific cognitive mechanisms invoked when an aviator confronts emergency autorotations, instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), or unexpected weapons system malfunctions. The Army-LOC was purposefully constructed to overcome the psychometric bandwidth-fidelity dilemma by calibrating control attributions directly to the military cockpit, tactical leadership chains, and aviation mishap mechanics.

From an applied military psychology perspective, the instrument fulfills three vital roles:

• Diagnostic and Training Applications: The scale enables flight instructors, aviation safety officers, and flight surgeons to assess aviation students and rated aviators during Initial Entry Rotary Wing (IERW) training and advanced mission qualification. Aviators demonstrating high levels of externality, fatalism, or resignation can be identified prior to mission deployment, allowing for targeted human factors interventions and Crew Resource Management (CRM) remediation.
• Accident and Incident Investigation: Aviation safety boards routinely investigate the human factors surrounding Class A, B, and C flight mishaps. The Army-LOC provides safety boards with an empirically grounded theoretical architecture to examine systemic cognitive rationalizations, operational complacency, and post-accident defensiveness, contrasting aviators who ascribe near-misses to “bad luck” versus those who view near-misses as personal signals to remediate deficits in skill or vigilance.
• Research and Predictive Modeling: The scale serves as an indispensable research tool within defense human factors initiatives. When administered alongside parallel batteries—such as the Army Hazardous Events Scale, the Army Safety Attitudes Scale, and standardized situational judgment inventories (e.g., Army Aviation Scenarios)—the Army-LOC provides the empirical framework necessary to model structural relationships among personality traits, cognitive appraisal, risk tolerance, and operational aeronautical decision-making (ADM).

5. Psychological Construct

The Army-LOC assesses a multifaceted psychological construct rooted in social learning theory and human factors engineering. Control beliefs within high-stress performance domains are neither unidimensional nor purely dichotomous; rather, they manifest across distinct behavioral and attributional facets. In its comprehensive factorial derivation, the Army-LOC delineates six distinct components, alongside two macro-level operational dimensions:

Core Operational Macro-Dimensions

• Aviation Internality: The belief that mission safety, incident avoidance, and professional survival are strictly determined by one’s own skill, procedural compliance, physical preparation, and cognitive vigilance. Aviators exhibiting high internality believe that thorough pre-flight aircraft inspections, strict adherence to Army Regulations, and active situation management insulate the crew from systemic hazards. For example, an individual who endorses the item “If I take the right actions, I can avoid accidents” operates under the assumption of personal agency and deterministic causality.
• Aviation Externality: The macro-level perception that operational outcomes, mishaps, and survival in military aviation are predominantly determined by forces beyond personal human agency. This encompasses external attributions to mechanical vulnerability, command decisions, random environmental disturbances, and cosmic chance. High externality is typified by beliefs such as “Whether or not I get into an accident is mostly a matter of Luck.”

The Six Component Structure

Hunter and Stewart (2009) identified six granular psychological components through empirical factor analysis:

• Component 1: Luck: An active attribution to fortune, superstition, and unpredictable probability distributions. Aviators high in this dimension perceive survival as an unpredictable lottery, agreeing with statements like “Successful flying is partly a matter of good luck” or “I’d rather be lucky than good.” This orientation reduces motivation to engage in exhaustive mission planning or contingency pre-computation.
• Component 2: Externality (Systemic & Situational): The conviction that tactical flight environments are fundamentally dominated by non-controllable operational factors, including unpredictable weather, command pressures, or peer actions. Items such as “Regarding safety, I can only do what the Army tells me to do” reflect a perceived abdication of personal safety agency in favor of external institutional control.
• Component 3: Internality (Personal Mastery & Efficacy): Reflects unyielding self-reliance, proactive discipline, and the internalization of both success and failure. Statements such as “When I make a mistake, I am to blame” and “If I have a close call, it just means I have to work harder next time” reflect an attributional style where near-misses stimulate professional development rather than relief at avoiding disaster.
• Component 4: Accident Causality: A focused attribution regarding why aviation mishaps occur across the broader military population. This dimension reflects an aviator’s philosophy on systemic versus individual failure, asserting that “Most accidents are due to Aviators’ carelessness” and “Accidents could be eliminated, if pilots made more of an effort.” Individuals scoring high here exhibit zero tolerance for operational rationalization.
• Component 5: Destiny and Fate: A distinct metaphysical orientation characterized by pre-deterministic fatalism. Captured by aphorisms such as “I’ll die when it’s my time to go, but not before” and “You don’t go until your number is up,” this subscale reflects a deeply rooted coping mechanism frequently observed in combat units, wherein dangerous exposures are psychologically reconciled by surrendering perceived control to destiny.
• Component 6: Resignation: A passive, acquiescent posture toward occupational hazards, characterized by the belief that hazard avoidance is ultimately futile because systemic hazards are ubiquitous. Exemplified by statements like “Stuff just happens” and “No matter how hard Aviators try to prevent them, there will always be accidents,” resignation undermines proactive safety intervention and correlates with learned helplessness.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Army-LOC is theoretically situated at the nexus of Rotter’s Social Learning Theory, Bernard Weiner’s Attribution Theory, and Aeronautical Decision-Making (ADM) models developed within aviation human factors research.

Rotter’s Social Learning Theory and Domain Specificity

Julian Rotter (1954, 1966) posited that the potential for a given behavior to occur in a specific psychological situation is a function of the expectancy that the behavior will lead to a particular reinforcement and the value of that reinforcement to the actor:

BP = f(E, RV)

Rotter conceptualized generalized expectancies for internal versus external control as a stable personality disposition. However, Rotter himself repeatedly stressed that as individuals gain sustained experience within a highly specialized, rule-bound, and technologically mediated performance environment, broad generalized expectancies yield to domain-specific expectancies. In the cockpit of an advanced military helicopter (e.g., an AH-64 Apache or UH-60 Black Hawk), generalized beliefs about everyday life (e.g., academic examinations or social relationships) lack the contextual relevance necessary to account for the variance in tactical flying behavior. The Army-LOC addresses this limitation by grounding locus of control specifically within the context of flight hazards, aircraft performance envelopes, standard regulations, and operational mishaps.

Weiner’s Three-Dimensional Attributional Model

Bernard Weiner’s (1985, 1986) attributional theory provides a foundational framework for understanding how military aviators process performance outcomes. Weiner organized causal attributions along three bipolar axes:

• Locus of Causality: Internal (e.g., pilot effort, skill, reaction time) versus External (e.g., unexpected crosswinds, maintenance failures, air traffic control errors).
• Stability: Stable (e.g., innate aptitude, institutional safety climate) versus Unstable (e.g., transient fatigue, sudden microbursts, good or bad luck).
• Controllability: Controllable (e.g., pre-flight checklist thoroughness, personal decision to divert around severe storms) versus Uncontrollable (e.g., mechanical bird strike, enemy fire).

The Army-LOC components map directly onto these attributional dimensions. Component 1 (Luck) represents an external, unstable, and uncontrollable attribution. Component 3 (Internality) reflects an internal, relatively stable, and highly controllable attribution. Component 5 (Destiny) embodies an external, stable, and completely uncontrollable fatalism. In military aviation, attributing an in-flight close call to an internal, controllable factor (e.g., “I failed to monitor my descent rate”) stimulates adaptive behavioral adjustment, rigorous study, and future caution. Conversely, attributing the identical close call to an external, uncontrollable factor (e.g., “I got lucky the trees were low”) preserves self-esteem in the short term but perpetuates unsafe cognitive shortcuts and operational drift.

The Aviation Safety Matrix and Hazardous Attitudes

Within human factors engineering, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and military flight training commands identify five classic “Hazardous Attitudes” that subvert aeronautical decision-making: Anti-Authority, Impulsivity, Invulnerability, Macho, and Resignation. The Army-LOC directly operationalizes the Resignation attitude (“What’s the use? No matter what I do, it won’t make a difference”). By embedding these attitudinal dimensions into empirical psychometric scales, Hunter and Stewart established a direct link between an aviator’s latent control beliefs and actionable safety risks in flight operations.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Army-LOC was established through extensive empirical investigations involving active-duty, Reserve, and National Guard aviators in the United States Army. Validation paradigms evaluated construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related predictive validity.

Construct and Structural Validity

Construct validity was validated through principal component analysis (PCA) and confirmatory factor modeling conducted by Hunter and Stewart (2009). The structural separation between the 15-item Internality Scale and the 15-item Externality Scale confirmed that locus of control in aviation is not an absolute, single bipolar continuum, but rather comprises two orthogonal dimensions. Aviators can concurrently recognize personal responsibility for aircraft manipulation (internal mastery) while acknowledging the extreme external volatility and mechanical vulnerabilities inherent in combat flight (external reality). The construct integrity of the subscales was further supported by expected inter-correlations among the six extracted components, where Luck and Fate correlated positively with Externality, and correlated negatively or orthogonally with Internality.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

Convergent validity was demonstrated through significant correlations with established human factors constructs:

• Army Safety Attitudes Scale: Scores on the Army-LOC Internality Scale correlated positively (r = .48, p < .001) with proactive safety attitudes, compliance with standard flight operating procedures (SOPs), and peer safety enforcement. Conversely, the Externality and Resignation subscales correlated negatively with procedural safety adherence (r = -.41, p < .001).
• Hazardous Attitudes: Externality, Luck, and Fate demonstrated strong positive convergence with FAA and military measures of Resignation (r = .56, p < .001) and Invulnerability (r = .34, p < .01).
• Discriminant Distinctiveness: When evaluated against generalized personality inventories (such as the NEO Five-Factor Inventory), the Army-LOC demonstrated distinct psychometric divergence from general Neuroticism and Extraversion, confirming that domain-specific control beliefs capture operational safety variances distinct from general dispositional affectivity.

Predictive and Criterion-Related Validity

The decisive validation metric for any military aviation instrument is its capacity to predict operational performance and risk behaviors. In empirical investigations using the Army Hazardous Events Scale and Army Aviation Scenarios:

• Flight Violations and Mishaps: Aviators scoring in the upper quartile of the Externality and Luck subscales reported a significantly higher frequency of historical near-misses, flight rule infractions, and operational close calls (p < .01) compared to peers in the lowest quartile.
• Aeronautical Decision-Making (ADM) Scenarios: In high-fidelity situational judgment tests depicting ambiguous, deteriorating tactical flight environments (e.g., worsening weather, fuel state margins, mission pressure), aviators with elevated Internality scores chose significantly safer, more conservative courses of action, demonstrating lower risk tolerance and refusing to compromise safety minimums for mission convenience.

8. Reliability

The Army-LOC displays high internal consistency reliability across its primary subscales and factor components, satisfying psychometric criteria for both research and operational assessment.

Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha)

In the primary validation study conducted by Hunter and Stewart (2009) with U.S. Army aviators, the internal consistency statistics were established as follows:

• 15-Item Internality Scale: Cronbach’s α = .83
• 15-Item Externality Scale: Cronbach’s α = .92

When evaluated within the granular six-component framework, the subscales demonstrated the following internal consistency reliabilities:

• Component 1 (Luck): Cronbach’s α = .89 (15 items)
• Component 2 (Externality): Cronbach’s α = .87 (16 items)
• Component 3 (Internality): Cronbach’s α = .85 (15 items)
• Component 4 (Accident Causality): Cronbach’s α = .82 (8 items)
• Component 5 (Destiny / Fate): Cronbach’s α = .81 (9 items)
• Component 6 (Resignation): Cronbach’s α = .60 (9 items)

The exceptionally high reliability of the 15-item Externality Scale (α = .92) and the Luck component (α = .89) indicates strong item homogeneity when measuring external attributional tendencies in aviators. The lower alpha observed for Component 6 (Resignation, α = .60) reflects the multidimensional nature of resignation items, which blend social conformity, institutional constraints, and fatalistic coping strategies.

Item-Total Correlations and Standard Error of Measurement

Corrected item-total correlations for the 15-item Internality Scale ranged from .38 to .67, with no single item deletion resulting in an increase in the composite alpha coefficient. For the 15-item Externality Scale, item-total correlations ranged from .49 to .74, demonstrating that all items share substantial common variance with their primary construct. The Standard Error of Measurement (SEM) for the macro-scales remains low across operational cohorts, ensuring that individual aviator profiles can be reliably differentiated during human factors screening.

9. Factor Analysis

The factor structure of the Army-LOC was established through a series of exploratory principal component analyses (PCA) followed by orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique (Promax) factor rotations, executed on large-sample data collected from U.S. Army rotary-wing aviators.

Initial Factor Extraction and Latent Structure

In the original structural investigations conducted by Hunter and Stewart, the broad item pool was submitted to PCA to identify the underlying attributional dimensions of military flight safety. Evaluation of eigenvalues (using the Kaiser-Guttman criterion of eigenvalues > 1.0) and examination of the Cattell scree plot initially revealed six primary components that collectively accounted for substantial total variance:

• Component 1 (Luck): Accounted for the largest proportion of common variance, capturing explicit beliefs in chance, good fortune, and superstition as arbiters of survival.
• Component 2 (Externality): Captured systemic, organizational, and physical uncontrollability, emphasizing external environmental hazards, regulations, and mechanical limits.
• Component 3 (Internality): Defined by high positive loadings from items tapping personal efficacy, preparation, vigilance, and individual accountability.
• Component 4 (Accident Causality): Isolated attributional beliefs regarding the root causes of historical accidents, specifically focusing on pilot error, carelessness, and operational discipline.
• Component 5 (Destiny): Extracted fatalistic, deterministic beliefs regarding mortality, destiny, and predetermined life trajectories.
• Component 6 (Resignation): Captured themes of passive helplessness, inevitability of operational mishaps, and acquiescence to tactical danger.

Scale Optimization and Dual-Factor Solution

To provide aviation safety managers and researchers with an efficient, highly focused diagnostic instrument, Hunter and Stewart refined the broader factor architecture into two balanced, psychometrically robust scales: the 15-Item Internality Scale and the 15-Item Externality Scale. Confirmatory analyses demonstrated that these two macro-dimensions provide superior construct clarity, minimizing cross-loading noise while capturing the essential variance of internal agency versus external reliance. Factor loadings across the designated items are robust, with primary loadings predominantly exceeding .50, confirming strong construct representation.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational specifications of the Army Locus of Control Scale (Army-LOC) are structured as follows:

• Instrument Title: Army Locus of Control Scale (Army-LOC)
• Authors: David R. Hunter, Ph.D., and John E. Stewart, Ph.D. (2009)
• Instrument Type: Self-report psychometric rating scale / domain-specific personality inventory
• Primary Target Population: Military aviators (rotary-wing and fixed-wing), flight crew members, aviation safety officers, and flight trainees; applicable to civilian and commercial aviators
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil questionnaire, computerized testing battery, or web-based survey administration
• Scale Length: Optimized 15-item Internality Scale and 15-item Externality Scale (30 core items); alternatively administered as the full 88-item exploratory item pool capturing the six granular components (Luck, Externality, Internality, Accident Causality, Destiny, Resignation)
• Response Format: Five-point Likert-type response format:
  • a. Strongly Agree
  • b. Agree
  • c. Neither agree nor disagree
  • d. Disagree
  • e. Strongly Disagree
• Scoring Protocol: Items are assigned numerical values from 1 to 5 (e.g., Strongly Agree = 5, Agree = 4, Neither Agree nor Disagree = 3, Disagree = 2, Strongly Disagree = 1; or reversed depending on directionality). Subscale scores are derived by summing or averaging the item ratings within each designated dimension:
  • Internality Composite: Sum of the 15 Internality items (range: 15 to 75). Higher scores indicate strong personal agency, high safety vigilance, and proactive responsibility.
  • Externality Composite: Sum of the 15 Externality items (range: 15 to 75). Higher scores indicate external fatalism, reliance on luck, and perceived lack of personal operational control.
• Administration Time: Approximately 8 to 12 minutes for the 30-item scale; 20 to 25 minutes for the full inventory.

11. Permissions, Fee, and Test Year

The Army Locus of Control Scale (Army-LOC) was developed in 2009 under sponsorship from the United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI) and the United States Department of Defense (DoD). As a work prepared by officers and employees of the United States Government as part of their official duties, the research report and the embedded measurement instrument reside within the public domain under Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the United States Code.

The scale is free of licensing fees and may be utilized by academic researchers, military human factors personnel, and aviation safety practitioners without commercial royalties. The technical report documenting the scale’s derivation, normative data, and validation metrics is cataloged and publicly retrievable via the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) under Accession Number ADA509824 (available at https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA509824). Researchers utilizing the scale in formal publications should properly cite the primary monograph by Hunter and Stewart (2009).

12. References

• Hunter, D. R. (1995). Airman research questionnaire: Methodology and overall results (Report No. DOT/FAA/AM-95/27). Federal Aviation Administration. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA301546
• Hunter, D. R. (2002). Development of an aviation safety locus of control scale. Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine, 73(12), 1184–1188. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12498546/
• Hunter, D. R. (2002). Risk perception and risk tolerance in aircraft pilots (Report No. DOT/FAA/AM-02/17). Federal Aviation Administration Office of Aerospace Medicine. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA408253
• Hunter, D. R. (2004). Measurement of hazardous attitudes among pilots. The International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 15(1), 23–43. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327108ijap1501_2
• Hunter, D. R. (2006). Risk perception among general aviation pilots. The International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 16(2), 135–144. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327108ijap1602_2
• Hunter, D. R., & Stewart, J. E. (2009). Locus of control, risk orientation, and decision making among U.S. Army aviators (Research Report 1913). United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA509824
• Rotter, J. B. (1954). Social learning and clinical psychology. Prentice-Hall. https://doi.org/10.1037/10788-000
• Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80(1), 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0092976
• Weiner, B. (1985). An attributional theory of achievement motivation and emotion. Psychological Review, 92(4), 548–573. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.92.4.548
• Weiner, B. (1986). An attributional theory of motivation and emotion. Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4948-1

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)