Preliminary Report on Selected Life Course Variables and Reasons for Volunteering for the 28th Sinai Deployment.

Abstract : This report documents the before-deployment to the Sinai, a peacekeeping operation that comprised troops from the Reserve Component (RC) as well as the Active Component (AC). Before deploying, 503 soldiers completed surveys developed by the U.S. Army Research institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences that contained items covering a broad range of demographic and attitudinal variables. The findings of this report concern the reasons RC soldiers gave for volunteering; the expected effects of the deployment on the lives of all soldiers; and all deployees before-deploying educational aspirations, career intentions, organizational commitment, and marital/family status. RC soldiers' reasons for volunteering involved adventure, career challenge, advancement, and patriotism. The entire sample of soldiers expected the deployment to have positive effects on various aspects of their lives, especially their physical health and their military careers. Levels of organizational commitment and career intentions were high across the entire sample. Married soldiers reported high marital satisfaction and high levels of spouse support for the deployment. Differences among subgroups tended to be small, although RC soldiers were generally more positive than AC soldiers, and officers were more positive than enlisted personnel. There were few substantive differences among the soldiers on the variables examined. The authors conclude that before deployment status on the selected variables is roughly equivalent for the entire sample of deployees across both components (RC and AC) and all three rank levels (junior enlisted personnel, noncommissioned officers, and officers.