DSS Special Agent Test flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Least intrusive means

A judgment rule holding that among lawful options, the one infringing least on privacy, liberty, or property is preferred, with stronger measures justified only by greater necessity.

Escalation trigger

A condition that requires referral to a supervisor: the decision exceeds delegated authority, conflicts with policy, or is irreversible and high-impact.

Conflict of interest recusal

Disclosing a personal, family, or financial stake in a matter and withdrawing from decisions about it before any action is taken.

Contemporaneous documentation

Recording facts, options considered, rationale, and time at or near the moment of decision, because memory fades and records are discoverable.

Integrity test

A check asking whether an action could be defended if fully disclosed to the public; if it could not be defended, it is not permissible.

Fact versus inference

Separating directly observed data from conclusions drawn about them, and labeling any speculation explicitly as speculation in written reports.

Safety-first priority rule

A judgment ordering that places protection of life and safety above legal compliance, mission accomplishment, and efficiency, in that sequence.

Active voice

Sentence construction in which the subject performs the action, typically shorter and clearer about who is responsible for what.

Subject-verb agreement

The verb must match the subject's number, ignoring intervening prepositional phrases, as in 'the list of names is' rather than 'are'.

Parallel structure

Giving items in a series the same grammatical form, such as all nouns or all gerunds, so the list reads cleanly.

Dangling modifier

An introductory phrase that fails to modify the sentence's actual subject, producing unintended or illogical meaning.

Ambiguous pronoun reference

A pronoun such as it, they, or this that has more than one possible antecedent, forcing the reader to guess the meaning.

Redundancy

Repeating the same meaning in adjacent words, as in 'advance planning' or 'free gift', which adds length without adding content.

Validity versus soundness

An argument is valid if the conclusion follows from the premises, and sound if it is valid and every premise is actually true.

Contrapositive

The logically equivalent form of 'if P then Q', namely 'if not Q then not P'; unlike the converse, it preserves truth.

Converse error

Concluding 'P' from 'if P then Q' and 'Q'; the converse of a conditional is not logically equivalent to the original statement.

Necessary condition

A condition without which the outcome cannot occur; the outcome guarantees it, but the condition alone does not guarantee the outcome.

Sufficient condition

A condition whose presence guarantees the outcome, though the outcome may also arise through other sufficient conditions.

Correlation versus causation

Two variables moving together does not show that one causes the other; confounders, reverse causation, and selection effects can explain the pattern.

Base-rate neglect

Ignoring how common a condition is, which makes even a sensitive test produce mostly false positives when the condition is rare.

Percent change formula

Subtract the old value from the new value, divide by the old value, then multiply by 100 to express the change as a percentage.

Percentage points

The arithmetic difference between two percentages, distinct from the relative percent change computed between them.

Weighted average

The sum of each value multiplied by its weight, divided by the sum of the weights; used when groups differ in size.

Combined work rate

When two workers act together their rates add, so time together equals the reciprocal of the sum of individual rates.

Median resistance

The middle value of an ordered data set; unlike the mean, it is not pulled strongly by extreme outliers.

Truncated axis

A graph whose vertical scale begins above zero, which visually exaggerates the differences between bars or plotted lines.

Chunking

Grouping separate items into meaningful units, such as a phone number split into three blocks, to raise effective working-memory capacity.

Spaced repetition

Reviewing material at increasing intervals rather than in one block, which slows forgetting and strengthens long-term retention.

Serial position effect

The tendency to recall the first and last items of a list best, while middle items are most vulnerable to being lost.

Proactive interference

Older learning interfering with recall of newer material, common when similar names, numbers, or codes are learned close together.

Transposition error

A transcription slip in which correct characters appear in the wrong order, such as writing 1243 instead of 1234.

Recognition versus recall

Identifying a match among presented options is easier than generating the item from memory, so verification tasks favor recognition.