Validity of clinical color vision tests for air traffic control

Background: An experiment on the relationship between aeromedical color vision screening test performance and performance on color-dependent tasks of Air Traffic Control Specialists (ATCS) was replicated to expand the database supporting the job-related validity of 13 FAA-accepted screening tests. Methods: The original experiment (10) (n = 108), and the replication (n = 136) involved a total of 121 normal trichromats, 31 simple and 44 extreme anomalous trichromats, and 48 dichromats; both protans and deutans were included. The simulations of ATCS color tasks which served as validation criteria were flight progress strips (en route centers), aircraft lights and the Aviation Signal Light indicator (ATC terminal operations), and color weather radar (flight service station and en route center facilities). Results: The validities (Kappa) of aeromedical screening tests ranged from 0.44 to 0.91 for prediction of error-free performance on all color-dependent tasks. Conclusions: The aeromedical screening tests were generally acceptable in terms of selecting individuals who did not make errors on ATCS color tests, but several tests had high false alarm rates. High job-related validity, in the vicinity of 0.90, was confirmed for several aeromedical color vision tests used for ATCS screening.