The eleven subtests on the POST dispatcher battery
POST publishes an examinee guide and a user's manual for this battery, and between them they name every subtest, describe its format, print a worked sample question and give its number of items and its time limit. Very few public safety examinations are documented this well.
- Subtests
- Eleven, separately timed
- Paper-and-pencil
- Six
- Audiotape
- Five
- Total time
- About 2.5 to 3 hours, including a break
The six paper-and-pencil subtests
Public Safety Bulletin: three minutes to study a one-page shift bulletin, then fifteen questions in six minutes answered from memory after the bulletin is taken away.
Assigning Field Units: a set of assignment rules you have never seen, then twenty incidents in five minutes — which units go, how many, or none.
Evaluating Facts: fifteen statements in five minutes, each true, false, or impossible to decide from the facts you were given.
Setting Priorities: a priority code, then fifteen sets of three events in ten minutes, ranked first, second and third.
Reading Comprehension: twenty questions in fifteen minutes about supplied passages.
Clarity: fifteen pairs of sentences in five minutes, choosing the one written more clearly.
The five audiotape subtests
Recalling Facts & Details plays a simulated call and asks about it with no notes allowed. Call-Taking plays three calls and allows notes. Oral Directions plays a radio call from a patrol officer and allows notes. Checking Coded Information reads letter-number codes aloud at increasing speed against a printed code sheet. Checking & Listening asks you to compare a written hot sheet while tracking radio traffic at the same time.
RankHigh does not prepare any of these and plays no audio. They are not a small part of the battery: POST states that every subtest carries equal weight toward your total score, so those five are five elevenths of it.
What the abilities are called
POST groups the eleven subtests under four abilities and Commission Regulation 1957 requires applicants to be assessed for exactly those: verbal ability, reasoning, memory, and perceptual ability. Your score report gives you a separate figure for each as well as the overall.
Sources
- California POST — Entry-Level Dispatcher Selection Test Battery: Examinee Guide · checked 2026-09-07
- California POST — Entry-Level Dispatcher Selection Test Battery: User's Manual · checked 2026-09-07
- California POST — Public Safety Dispatcher Candidate Selection Standards · checked 2026-09-07