Abstract： Objective To study the effectiveness of psychological screening among submarine recruits and surface vessel recruits,and also to evaluate the effectiveness and orientation of psychological testing in current recruit medical examination.Methods Intelligent level,personality maturity,environmental adaptability and mental health of 1 746 submarine recruits and 2 549 surface vessel recruits enlisted by a certain naval unit in 2010 were monitored by using Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM),Personality Maturity Questionnaire (PMQ),and Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90).Differences in the variability of the scores between the two groups were statistically analyzed.Results Total scores of Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices for the submarine recruits and naval surface vessel recruits were (47.22 ± 7.15) and (44.81 ± 8.22)respectively,and significant differences could be noted between them (P ＜ 0.05).Of the 10 dimensions of PMQ,only the Work Attitude Scale (WA) score of the submarine recruits was significantly higher than that of the surface vessel recruits (P ＜ 0.05),and no significant differences in other 9 dimension scores were noted (P ＞0.05).Of the 11 scores of SCL-90,only the Somatization Factor of the submarine recruits was significantly higher than that of the other group(P ＜0.05),the other 10 scores of the submarine recruits were significantly lower than those of the surface vessel recruits (P ＜ 0.05).Conclusions The psychological quality of the submarine recruits was on the whole superior to that of the surface vessel recruits.Current psychological screening methods are lacking in effectiveness and orientation for the monitoring of recruit personality maturity and environmental adaptability.