Waiver Policy and Attrition.
Abstract
Increasing first term attrition and recently published findings about moral waiver policy motivate a review of Navy's enlistment and waiver standards. This paper investigates the recent experience of recruits with moral waivers. Based on regression analysis of a 20% sample of FY92-93 accessions, we find that moral waiver rates appear to be stable over the last five years. The analysis indicates that recruits who were female, still in school, and had low Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) scores were the least likely group to receive waivers. Older recruits with higher AFQT scores were the most likely to receive waivers. While recruits with moral waivers did have higher first term attrition than those without waivers, the increase was not as great as predicted by previous research. Results indicated that recruits with waivers for criminal behavior attrited at a rate of five percentage points higher than those with no waiver while recruits with drug and alcohol waivers attrited at essentially the same rate as recruits without waivers. The effect of waivers on attrition was not uniform for all gender and education groups. Female non-high school diploma graduates with criminal waivers experienced the highest increase in attrition while their male counterparts did not experience higher attrition. Restricting or eliminating gender or education groups that require criminal waivers would not be cost effective based on a simple analysis comparing projected attrition savings against estimated recruiting cost to replace applicants that otherwise qualify for service. Some form of screening model, similar to Navy's Compensatory Screening Model, may achieve attrition savings with less associated replacement costs.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1996
- Accession Number
- ADA311152
Entities
People
- Don Bohn
- Edward Schmitz