In 2016, the RAND Corporation was asked to develop a survey instrument to measure the incidence of hazing and bullying in the active-duty U.S. military. The instrument needed to align with evolving definitions of hazing and bullying and feature a limited number of survey items to reduce survey fatigue. In this report, the authors describe the development and design of the survey instrument and offer suggestions for improved future versions that would not preclude trend analysis between the original fielding and subsequent fieldings.
The authors describe the development of a survey instrument to help the U.S. Department of Defense understand racial and ethnic harassment and discrimination among its uniformed personnel, the instrument itself, and recommendations to support its use.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is committed to eliminating harassment and unlawful discrimination within the U.S. armed forces. This includes harassment and discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity, which persists across the United States, including in the U.S. military. To help military leaders and policymakers better understand the nature of racial/ethnic harassment and discrimination within the armed services, RAND researchers created a survey instrument to assess the prevalence of racial/ethnic harassment and discrimination within DoD. To do so, we (1) reviewed published surveys that assess racial/ethnic harassment, discrimination, microaggressions (i.e., stereotypes about specific races or ethnicities, passive poor treatment by others, and expressions of opinions regarding racism), and related content and (2) consulted with experts in the occurrence and measurement of harassment and discrimination on the basis of race/ethnicity.
In 2014, RAND developed a new version of the survey used by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to estimate the prevalence of sexual assault and sexual harassment. More than 115,000 active-component members completed that survey in the summer of 2014. Subsequently, the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office in the Office of the Secretary of Defense asked RAND whether a short version of the sexual harassment measure in the new survey could be developed for use in the Organizational Climate Surveys fielded by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute. Whereas the sexual harassment instrument in the survey RAND developed required up to 52 questions to establish whether a service member experienced sexual harassment as defined in DoD regulations, in this short report the authors document a five-question measure that reliably predicts scores on the longer instrument. The five-item sexual harassment survey seems to be appropriate for use in military organizational climate surveys. The current report documents the suggested scoring of the short form instrument and demonstrates the close association between the short and full instruments when used to assess sexual harassment at either the individual or organizational level.
The Department of Defense Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office asked the RAND Corporation to independently assess rates of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and gender discrimination in the military. This volume presents the results of methodological investigations into sources of potential bias in estimates produced from the 2014 RAND Military Workplace Study for active- and reserve-component members in the U.S. military.
"In early 2014, the Department of Defense Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office asked the RAND National Defense Research Institute to conduct an independent assessment of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and gender discrimination in the military -- an assessment last conducted in 2012 by the department itself with its Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Personnel. This volume documents the methodology used in the resulting RAND Military Workplace Study, which invited close to 560,000 service members to participate in a survey fielded in August and September of 2014. It describes the survey methods, how the new questionnaire was designed, and how sampling, recruitment, and analytic weighting were pursued. It also includes the entire survey instrument."--Publisher's website.
"In early 2014, the Department of Defense (DoD) Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) asked the RAND National Defense Research Institute (NDRI) to conduct an independent assessment of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and gender discrimination in the military -- an assessment last conducted in 2012 by the department itself with the Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Personnel (WGRA). Separately, the Coast Guard requested that we expand the 2014 study to include an assessment of its active and reserve force. This report provides initial top-line active-duty Coast Guard estimates from the resulting RAND Military Workplace Study, which invited close to 560,000 service members to participate in a survey fielded in August and September of 2014. The RMWS takes an approach to counting individuals in the military who experienced sexual assault, sexual harassment, or gender discrimination that measures the incidence of specific crimes and violations. Our measurement of sexual assault aligns closely with the definitions and criteria in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) for Article 120 crimes. The survey measures of sexual harassment and gender discrimination, which together we refer to as sex-based military equal opportunity (MEO) violations, use criteria drawn from DoD Directive 1350.2. Compared with past surveys that were designed to measure a climate of sexual misconduct associated with illegal behavior, the approach used in the RMWS offers greater precision in estimating the number of crimes and MEO violations that have occurred."--Publisher's website.
"In early 2014, the Department of Defense Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office asked the RAND National Defense Research Institute to conduct an independent assessment of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and gender discrimination in the military -- an assessment last conducted in 2012 by the department itself with its Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Personnel. This volume documents the methodology used in the resulting RAND Military Workplace Study, which invited close to 560,000 service members to participate in a survey fielded in August and September of 2014. It describes the survey methods, how the new questionnaire was designed, and how sampling, recruitment, and analytic weighting were pursued. It also includes the entire survey instrument."--Publisher's website.
