Women Veterans Project: Operation Iraqi Freedom-Wave II

Operation Iraqi Freedom has not come to a decisive victory with the toppling of Saddam Hussein as anticipated. Our military personnel have served throughout the first offensive to occupation to peacekeeping operations that have remained hostile and dangerous. The purpose of this project is to extend our currently TSNRP funded project with an additional wave of survey data collection with the same panel of respondents to capture the dynamics of this ongoing operation on our active, reserve and guard personnel in real time. It will add considerable statistical power to the ongoing comprehensive cross-sectional design surveying 1200 randomly selected Air Force women deployed in service of OIF. Two hypothesized models are designed to disentangle the multiple, additive and interactive effects of war-related stressors including mobilization and deployment, and other predisposing factors that impact physical and mental health as well as retention in the armed forces. Because of the unique nature of the OIF deployment (e.g., multiple deployments, extended time in theater, waning public support) it is vital to document how changes in mobilization and associated circumstances affect the health, functioning and retention of our personnel. Extending the current study from cross-sectional to longitudinal will enable us to undertake more definitive causal analyses and derive more statistically sound conclusions regarding various effects and outcomes. The validation of the hypothesized models with longitudinal data (wave II) would provide significant information for policymaking and for interventions to improve the physical and mental health of military women and their motivation to remain in uniform.

Final report is available on NTRL: https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/PB2013101316.xhtml