Physical Ability Test (PAT) for Police Officers

Physical Ability Test (PAT) for Police Officers

The PAT is a validated test assessing candidates’ ability to meet the physical demands of the police officer job. It features: 

  • Eight (8) critical and physically-demanding tasks every police officer must be able to perform.

  • A development process that takes advantage of a validated job analysis but tailors the test to your own agency’s requirements.

  • Flexibility to meet the specific needs of your department in terms of equipment, events, distances, and passing scores.

  • A well-defined administration plan that maximizes the number of candidates that can be processed while being cost-effective in terms of facilities and proctors.                           

Benefits

Choosing the PAT for your entry-level police officer recruitment gives you a professionally developed and thoroughly validated measure of your candidates’ physical capabilities.

  • Validity: A large sample of randomly selected police department subject matter experts completed the Job Analysis and Critical Events Surveys to validate the PAT.

  • Customization: Surveys completed by your department ensure a test tailored to your equipment and SOPs while linked back to the validity database.

  • Pretesting: The PAT is pretested using your own police officers to identify any required modifications and to establish a passing score tailored to your department’s needs.

  • Support: FPSI provides consultation, job analysis forms, and a complete administration manual.

Incumbent Maintenance Physical Ability Testing

Police and human resources departments across the U.S. spend an inordinate amount of time and money ensuring that their police officer recruitment process includes a job-related and validated physical ability test (PAT) for new hires. However, there currently is no standardized PAT used as a maintenance test to ensure that police department personnel remain physically fit to perform the critical, physical parts of the job once they are hired.  

>> Learn how to implement a work sample physical ability test (PAT) that can be used for BOTH police candidates and incumbents and the ways in which different cutoff scores can be used for both groups.

We are delighted to share our Police Officer Physical Ability Test (PAT) video with you courtesy of the Glendale Police Department!

Click here: FPSI’s PAT at Glendale Police Department

Event 1: Stair/Hill Climb with Equipment
Event 2: Obstacle Climb Over
Event 3: Obstacle Climb Under
Event 4: Obstacle Jump Over/Across
Event 5: Victim Removal
Event 6: Trigger Pull
Event 7: Beam Walk
Event 8: Stair Descent with Equipment

Implementation

Implementation of the PAT is carefully planned to ensure validity and to meet your needs. To begin the process or for further information, please call FPSI at (916) 294-4242 or send an e-mail message to info@fpsi.com.