CAP
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Capacity, Aptitude and Potential
CAP Testing is pretty much a mental and psychological assessment to get not only IQ, but various personality traits. The result is a CAP Score that decides whether you can be extracted and if you are how many concubines you can take with you - see this chart.
The test is generally done by AIs posing as humans inside a virtual reality session. Various scenarios are directly input to the subject via VR to judge the subject's reaction, thus providing data on their abilities, mental flexibility, and basic character and projected growth potential. The physical being can be edited by the Confederacy's Med-Tubes, but the complex of experience that makes one person a hero and another a coward can't be generated.
Sub-Score Axes
Loner or team player?
Lover or fighter?
Leader or follower?
Loyal or traitorous?
Innovation/Creativity index?
Empathic vs Sociopath?
Responsible or otherwise?
Honorable or otherwise?
Honest or otherwise?
Intelligent or otherwise?
Courageous or otherwise (*)
Experience, and the ability to learn from experience?
Maternal and paternal instincts are also rated, as well as an assessment given as to how inhibited or uninhibited sexually the subject is. Jack has some references that he's been thinking about as referents -- I don't recognize them, not having read those particular books, but you may have...
(* A measure of cowardice is, in most cases, a personal survival trait but courage is a species or culture survival trait.)
Documentation
The ID cards provided as part of CAP testing are difficult, if not impossible, for Earth-bound technology to counterfeit, though people have tried for various purposes, though the term "Smart Card" may understate their capability. During testing, a testee is injected with nanites that will help confirm the emotional/reactive state of the person being interviewed providing an internal veridicator. These nanites are used, at the time the CAP card is touched by the person, to bond the tiny AI inside the card (and its nanos that re-confirm the identity of the holder) to the person the card identifies.
When counterfeits were first detected, the extraction team would pull them to the ship with their selectees, and then quietly dispose of them, leaving their selectees as "extras".
Discussion
There are suspicions that the CAP scoring criteria may be biased enough to give males an advantage. This may drive some evolution of the qualities that the test is collecting as some who make the cut sometimes "come in behind" others who don't (see Second Extraction). While there are plenty of males who would prefer to keep the CAP criteria "as they are" there is likely to be some interest from the AIs' in not pissing away valuable resources.
(Akarge says: Currently it looks like one adult male out of every four or five will make the cut-off score, while adult women will be only one in fifteen to twenty. Further, women over the age of menopause are not considered eligible.)
Additionally, the "binary" nature of the cut line in CAP scoring is one of the drivers behind Governor Alex Flowers of Demeter's decision to "soften" the lines to ensure that those below the cut who have useful abilities to have an opportunity to express them and work towards full citizenship (volunteering for service within the Demeter Militia for instance, providing a form of suffrage) which will, after a whole township died in the aftermath of a slave uprising (all services shut down with no "citizens" to provide orders), be seen as a better approach than maintaining the "master/slave" model. Humans tend to look for loop-holes to improve their own-- or their children's-- situation. Note that this use of "service" to acquire citizenship rights is reminiscent of the back-story to Robert Heinlein's book "Starship Troopers".
The response to the idea and legality of CAP testing varied over time, with the position of various Earth governments changing drastically from one extreme to the other.
See Also
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