The Assessment, Prediction, and Prevention of Destructive Employee Behaviors (Tracking no: 20-000000108)
Abstract
Destructive behaviors, such as sexual assault, physical assault, and binge drinking, are common within many workplaces. No employerincluding the US Navyis immune to these and other similar behaviors. Unfortunately, the presence of destructive behavior can undermine mission readiness, harm the psychological and physical well-being of victims, and impose financial costs.The effective assessment of these behaviors, therefore, is of critical importance.Previous assessment efforts, virtually all of which have occurred within a civilian context, have led to the development of generic, one-size-fits-all measures of destructive behavior. These existing measures are likely to be of limited value to the US Navy for two reasons. First, existing measures are likely to be contaminated with content that is irrelevant within many Navy ratings. Existing destructive behavior items that ask about the misuse of reimbursement policies,for instance, would be irrelevant within ratings where personnel do not have out-of-pocket business expenses. Second, existing measures are likely to be deficient. In other words, they are likely to omit destructive behaviors that are relevant to a particular rating or to the Navy more generally. This deficiency problem may be exacerbated by the fact that existing destructivebehavior measures have nearly always been developed using samples of civilian employees. The proposed research would accomplish two objectives: (a) the development of four contextspecific measures of destructive behavior that are specifically tailored to four ratings of the US Navy and (b) the development of a general measure of destructive behavior for the US Navy thatis applicable across four ratings. Our measurement development process would involve three distinct phases. In Phase I, we would conduct four focus groups, each of which would comprise personnel representing a different rating. The focus group participants would identify destructive behaviors that are relevant within their rating. We would use the data we collectedfrom the focus groups to write a pool of destructive behavior items. In Phase II, we would use item analysis to examine the performance of each individual item from the initial item pool. Only those items that performed well during Phase II (i.e., those items that participant endorsed sufficiently often and that yielded sufficient item discrimination) would be included in the final version of the destructive behavior scales. We would also build a general scale of destructivebehaviors that are uniform across the four ratings. Finally, in Phase III we would use standard test validation methods to examine the construct validity of these final measures. This phase would first involve the development of a nomological network that identifies the hypothesized predictors, correlates, and consequences of the destructive behavior construct. We would thencollect data that test the extent to which the destructive behavior measures that resulted from Phase II perform in the manner predicted by the nomological network. The development of context-specific measures of destructive behavior has important implications for the US Navy. The availability of such measures would increase the Navys capacity to detect destructive behavior. This is important because future efforts to predict and prevent destructive behavior will depend on the availability of measures that accurately reflect the destructive behaviors that are commonly present among Navy personnel.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- May 05, 2021
- Source ID
- N000142112231
Entities
People
- Nathan Bowling
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- Wright State University