Survey for Assessing Racial/Ethnic Harassment and Discrimination in the U.S. Military

Abstract

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. This report provides a description of the development process used to design the survey instrument to assess racial/ethnic harassment and discrimination in the military and releases the full content and scoring procedures for the instrument. This information may help DoD policymakers better understand and interpret the survey results they receive. It can also assist analysts and survey research professionals with understanding the instrument design and with evaluating or conducting analyses of data collected using this instrument. In 2015, DoD adopted the instrument as part of the Workplace Equal Opportunity Surveys of military service members. The findings of their survey effort will continue to be released through official DoD channels. This report does not contain survey results.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 2021
Accession Number
AD1150463

Entities

People

  • Coreen A. Farris
  • Kristie L. Gore
  • Miriam Matthews
  • Terry L Schell

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Congress
  • Department Of Defense
  • Employment
  • Ethnic Groups
  • Governments
  • Health Services
  • Law
  • Management Personnel
  • Military Training
  • Minority Groups
  • National Security
  • Personnel Management
  • Prejudice
  • Psychology
  • Public Administration
  • Public Policy
  • Recreation
  • Social Psychology
  • Social Sciences
  • Sociology
  • Unified Combatant Commands
  • United States

Readers

  • Organizational Psychology.
  • Strategic Security Studies