Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) Experiment: Research Biases in the Development of the CSF
Abstract
The Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program is based on the theory of psychological resilience. The program has been cited by the psychology community as potentially ineffectual because of biases that occur throughout the research used in its development. Biases in the basic research in sample selection, confounding variables, and measuring results were neither identified nor mitigated. Upon approval of the CSF program, the civilian research had not been proven to be able to increase resiliency reliably and was not designed for military use. The civilian research was conducted on middle school through college-age students who had been through traumatic experiences, not on deployed Soldiers in combat. This thesis looked at the research that led to the development of the CSF and compared it against simple analytical and statistical techniques to determine if there were significant research biases that would keep the program from developing the resilient, "indomitable" Soldiers that the program was supposed to produce. The research showed that there were significant unmitigated biases that threaten the present CSF program's validity.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 13, 2013
- Accession Number
- ADA590400
Entities
People
- Jeremy Roy
Organizations
- United States Army Command and General Staff College