The Military Identity Project: A Self-Schema Approach to Investigate a Military Identity Construct
Abstract
Despite a decreased ops tempo and increased military psychological health resources, psychological disorders continue to top the list of active duty military member diagnoses. Cognitive therapies are the evidence-based recommended treatment for the majority of military prevalent psychological disorders. Many of the cognitive therapies are theoretically founded on the premise that psychological disorders stem from cognitive vulnerabilities rooted in the content and structure of the self-schema. These cognitive knowledge structures, known as self-schemas, are the building blocks of our identities. The purpose of this dissertation research was to investigate and describe the presence and content of military self-schemas in active duty U.S. military members as a first step in developing a program of research linking military identity and military psychological health and well-being. To begin, the concept of military identity was investigated with an evolutionary cultural perspective to describe defining attributes, antecedents and consequences using Rodgers (2000) methodologies. Health sciences publications from 2001-2015 were critically examined, inductively analyzed and synthesized to clarify the concept of identity in the context of contemporary military culture. The predominantly cognitive nature of the concept led to an investigation guided by the self-schema framework. In a novel extension of the existing self-schema science, the construct of military identity was investigated under the broad title, Military Identity Project (MIP). The MIP studies employed a mixed-methods, cross-sectional, descriptive design to determine the presence and content of . post-9/11 military identity in four groups of active duty military personnel of the Air Force Academy (first and second year students, training instructors, and faculty). A series of seven tasks assessed military identity operationally with explicit and implicit measures of military self-schema.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 08, 2015
- Accession Number
- AD1127910
Entities
People
- Laurie A. Migliore
Organizations
- Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences