Measuring Resilience
Abstract
After nearly two decades of war in the Middle East and centuries of conflict, todays service member is more vulnerable then ever. Our nations warriors can deploy to and redeploy from combat in a matter of hours, not the days, weeks, or months of the past. The growing, enduring, and repeating stressors of military service have placed a premium on creating resilient Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines. Yet, currently, there is still a void of knowledge surrounding how best to tangibly assess or train the resilience of service members and how to proactively identify those who are at risk or headed towards risk of compromising their resilience. The aim of the current study is to associate physiological metrics with self-reported assessments to enable such a proactive approach to occur. The study occurred outside the sterile confines of the laboratory, choosing instead to follow 44 service members in their normal patterns of life. In collaboration with the University of Arizona, participants in the present study were asked to wear a commercially available health tracker, an URA ring, while self-administering proven subjective assessments and awareness training, on an online platform. The results found statistically relevant associations between heart rate variability metrics and the subjective assessments of anxiety, depression, and compassion fatigue. Further studies are needed to confirm and explore these associations, as well as further analysis of the plethora of data.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 2020
- Accession Number
- AD1126778
Entities
People
- Joshua L. Boyle
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School