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The emergence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the accompanying statewide shutdowns altered traditional models of recruiting and retaining military personnel. The dramatic increase in the unemployment rate and the restrictions on in-person interactions could have changed individuals' incentives to join or remain in the military. In this report, researchers provide an exploratory and descriptive analysis of the changes in military enlisted recruiting and retention during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis covers changes in end strength, enlisted accessions, enlisted retention, the number of enlistment contracts, and the quality of recruits in each month of fiscal year (FY) 2020 relative to those of previous years. The analysis also covers changes in military personnel policies made during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors find that end strength and retention increased in each service except for the Marine Corps, accessions decreased in each service except for the Navy, enlistment contracts decreased in each service, and the quality of recruits increased in each service except for the Navy. Changes primarily occurred between March and June 2020. The results suggest that the services primarily focused on retention in order to meet their end strength goals during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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To better understand sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the Army, RAND Arroyo Center researchers created profiles of active-component soldiers' most serious sexual harassment and gender discrimination experiences. This report describes the most common types of behaviors that occur, characteristics of (alleged) perpetrators, most common times and places in which sexual harassment and gender discrimination occur, and differences between high-risk and non–high-risk installations. Women's and men's experiences of sexual harassment and gender discrimination look broadly the same at high-risk installations compared with non–high-risk installations, and they do not appear to differ across high-risk installations. However, men's and women's experiences of sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the active-component Army are very different. Women are more likely than men to experience gender discrimination, repeated attempts to establish an unwanted romantic or sexual relationship, and sexual comments about their appearance, whereas men are more likely than women to be told that they do not act like a man is supposed to act. Soldiers often experience multiple forms of sexual harassment and gender discrimination; women experience more types of behaviors, on average, than men do. What women's and men's experiences have in common is that they frequently take place at work during the workday and involve exposure to offensive or persistent discussion of and jokes about sex.
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To correctly provide benefits to reserve component (RC) members, activations must be reported accurately. In this report, the authors quantify the frequency of errors in RC activation data and estimate the potential impact of these errors on RC member benefits, including U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) disability compensation, qualification for the Post-9/11 GI Bill, and eligibility for TRICARE. The impetus for this study was a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and VA working group on information-sharing that identified multiple data errors associated with activation timing and duration, resulting in potential errors in the delivery of benefits to veterans, including underpayments and overpayments of VA disability benefits. Through data analysis and information obtained via subject-matter expert discussions, the authors discuss the potential sources of each type of error and provide recommendations to mitigate these errors in the future.
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The Department of the Air Force (DAF) has placed a strategic focus on improving talent management, including how to build a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce. To support the DAF's efforts, in fiscal year 2021, the RAND Corporation's Project AIR FORCE was asked to (1) provide targeted benchmarks and a planning tool that will allow DAF to evaluate the demographic composition of the active-duty workforce overall and functional areas within this workforce and (2) identify practices and opportunities that the DAF can use to support diversity in critical career fields. This report is one of a series of reports meant to address these tasks. In it, the authors describe the construction of career field benchmarks using near-equivalent groups of civilian workers, provide examples using several functional areas, and discuss considerations for interpreting these results. Accompanying this narrative are the Air Force Occupational Diversity Benchmarking Workbooks, a pair of Excel workbooks (one for enlisted personnel and one for officers) containing benchmarks for the demographic distribution of DAF functional areas. The benchmarks are created using civilians working in near-equivalent occupations to DAF occupations, adjusted to account for differences in age and education level between DAF and the civilian workforce. The workbooks contain a menu of benchmark options using both narrow and broad definitions of near equivalent. Each DAF occupation can also be compared to the entire civilian workforce. The authors describe considerations for choosing the most-appropriate civilian comparison group for each occupation and for interpreting comparisons.
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To better understand sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the Army, RAND Arroyo Center researchers created profiles of active-component soldiers' most serious sexual harassment and gender discrimination experiences. This report describes the most common types of behaviors that occur, characteristics of (alleged) perpetrators, most common times and places in which sexual harassment and gender discrimination occur, and differences between high-risk and non–high-risk installations. Women's and men's experiences of sexual harassment and gender discrimination look broadly the same at high-risk installations compared with non–high-risk installations, and they do not appear to differ across high-risk installations. However, men's and women's experiences of sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the active-component Army are very different. Women are more likely than men to experience gender discrimination, repeated attempts to establish an unwanted romantic or sexual relationship, and sexual comments about their appearance, whereas men are more likely than women to be told that they do not act like a man is supposed to act. Soldiers often experience multiple forms of sexual harassment and gender discrimination; women experience more types of behaviors, on average, than men do. What women's and men's experiences have in common is that they frequently take place at work during the workday and involve exposure to offensive or persistent discussion of and jokes about sex.
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This paper studies the immediate and long-run mortality effects of the first community-based health intervention in the world - the Framingham Health and Tuberculosis Demonstration, 1917-1923. The official evaluation committee and the historical narrative suggest that the demonstration was highly successful in controlling tuberculosis and reducing mortality. Using newly digitized annual cause-of-death data for municipalities in Massachusetts, 1901-1934, and different empirical strategies, we find little evidence to support this positive assessment. In fact, we find that the demonstration did not reduce tuberculosis mortality, all-age mortality, nor infant mortality. These findings contribute to the ongoing debate on whether public-health interventions mattered for the decline in (tuberculosis) mortality prior to modern medicine. At a more fundamental level, our study questions this particular type of community-based setup with non-random treatment assignment as a method of evaluating policy interventions.
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To better understand the circumstances surrounding sexual assault in the Army, RAND Arroyo Center researchers created descriptions of active-component soldiers' most serious sexual assault experiences using data from the 2016 and 2018 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Members. In this report, researchers describe the most common types of behaviors that occurred, characteristics of alleged perpetrators, and times and places in which the experiences occurred. They also explore differences by gender, sexual orientation, and installation risk level. Nearly 90 percent of victims believed that the assault was committed for a sexual reason, and more than half indicated that the assault was meant to be abusive or humiliating. The typical perpetrator of victims' most serious sexual assault experiences was a male enlisted member of the military acting alone. Perpetrators were most often a military peer of the victim; perpetrators who were strangers to the victim were uncommon; and assaults by spouses, significant others, or family members were comparatively rare. Approximately two-thirds of victims' most serious experience of sexual assault occurred at a military installation. The authors found substantial differences by gender, especially in terms of the types of sexual assault behaviors victims experienced and in terms of the setting in which victims were sexually assaulted. The authors also found some evidence suggesting that sexual minorities-that is, individuals who identify with a sexual orientation other than heterosexual-may experience more-violent sexual assaults and more assaults that are meant to abuse, humiliate, haze, or bully, especially among men.
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The Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) mandated a pilot test of a program in which Army recruiters were authorized to recruit individuals into any of the three components and to receive credit for an enlistee for a period of not less than three years. This report provides the following: details about the design of the pilot test; a three-year analysis of the effects that consolidated recruiting efforts had on the ability of recruiters to attract and place qualified candidates; a determination of the extent to which consolidating recruiting efforts affected efficiency; and a discussion of challenges associated with a recruiter working to recruit individuals to enlist in a component in which the recruiter may not have served and of the satisfaction of recruiters with the pilot program. Overall, the program's effects on contracts and efficiency were small and not statistically meaningful. Given the absence of statistically or substantively meaningful effects on contract production or recruiting efficiency, as well as certain stakeholder concerns, the Army decided to terminate the pilot program after the third year. Weaknesses in the implementation of the program are highly likely to have contributed to the absence of meaningful differences in production between the test and comparison sites. But on balance, considering the organizational and operational changes required and related costs, the study team concluded that it is not likely that the Army can, particularly in the near term, overcome the challenges to launch a successful cross-component recruiting program.
Recruiting and enlistment. --- United States. --- Recruiting, enlistment, etc. --- Evaluation.
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The Department of Defense Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Members (WGRA) assesses whether service members experienced behaviors consistent with sexual assault or sexual harassment in the past year. For the most-serious experiences identified by respondents, the WGRA also measures a wide variety of victim characteristics, perpetrator characteristics, specific behaviors, and the context in which events occurred. This report describes the results of analyses run within the Army sample of the 2018 WGRA. These analyses sorted the sexual assault and sexual harassment experiences of victims into separate types based on the behaviors involved, the context and location of the events, the perpetrator characteristics, and the victim characteristics. This process defined five types of sexual assault and eight types of sexual harassment. The report describes these types of sexual assault and sexual harassment and assesses how common each type is in the Army. The report describes a breadth of both sexual assault and sexual harassment experiences that go beyond those typically discussed in prevention materials, and that might cause some to reassess common stereotypes about sexual assault and sexual harassment. This more detailed description of these experiences should inform Army prevention and response efforts to ensure that they reflect the full range of experiences that are prevalent in the Army.
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The 2019 Army People Strategy lists diversity among its strategic outcomes. This includes diversity in leadership, which is achieved by recruiting and retaining a diverse force. To help the Army accomplish these goals, RAND Arroyo Center examined retention of racial-ethnic minorities in the Regular Army's enlisted and officer ranks and how racial-ethnic composition changes as cohorts progress in rank over time, from accession through paygrades O-6 and E-5. Statistical models quantified the effects of observable factors on racial-ethnic differences in retention and career outcomes. Interviews with Army unit leaders provided insight into the reasons individuals stay in the Army or leave at given points, how unit leader decisionmaking affects such decisions, and what influences promotion decisions.
Diversity in the workplace --- Soldiers --- Racial justice --- Employee retention --- United States. --- Minorities. --- Officers. --- Personnel management. --- United States --- Armed Forces
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