One objective of the research was to identify career ladders with the greatest potential for improving retention. This study revealed that a regression model, which takes into account airmen career status and months of service while holding constant aptitude differences, can be used to display cross-sectional attitude data in a longitudinal fashion. From the displayed regression profiles, it is feasible to infer career-ladder relationships between job attitudes and tenure or career decisions. A characteristic increase in job attitude immediately after the reenlistment decision point in cross-sectional data reflects a "residualization process" whereby those dissatisfied with their jobs tend to leave the Air Force while more satisfied airmen remain. The increase reflects the impact of job attitude on career decisions and is not due to alternative "dissonance theory" or changes in intrinsic motivation explanations. The cross-sectional profiles provide a means of identifying specialties with the greatest potential for job reengineering where the goal is to positively improve retention through providing progressively more satisfying jobs. (TA)