Soldiers' Families: Tracking Their Well-Being during Peacetime and War
Abstract
Army planners require timely information to meet family support and assistance needs. In peacetime, those information needs have been met through various surveys conducted within conventional time frames. During periods of rapid change and policy debate, however, information needs are magnified and become more immediate. Questions may appear suddenly, only to change rapidly; attention may focus on a single segment of the population or the whole population. This Note is the outgrowth of a special assistance effort by the Arroyo Center for the Army Community and Family Support Center (CFSC) during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm (ODS). During the deployment for ODS, disruptions in diverse family settings generated new questions needing immediate answers. Faced with the need for short-term information that could also be of long-term value, CFSC asked RAND to consider ways in which the Army could gain information about experiences of Army personnel and their families during similar fast-breaking events. The Note was prepared to address a wider question as well: How to query a representative sample of Army families and obtain timely information on topics of concern that change quickly or become evident only as events and policies unfold. To accommodate a growing need for timely information, RAND devised a flexible survey plan that can be tailored to a broad spectrum of unforeseeable circumstances in peacetime and wartime contingencies. This plan affords the capacity for quick-turnaround response to information needs pertaining to family support as those information needs arise. Their proposed survey plan relies on an ongoing panel of families who are recontacted periodically by telephone (to confirm their location) and are available for repeated computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI). To achieve representativeness, the sample is designed so that data gathered from it can be generalized to all Army families.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1992
- Accession Number
- ADA260634
Entities
People
- Jennifer Hawes-dawson
- Peter A. Morrison
Organizations
- RAND Corporation