Attitudes, Aptitudes, and Aspirations of American Youth

by National Research Council
Attitudes, Aptitudes, and Aspirations of American Youth
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2003-02-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0309085314
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Recruiting an all-volunteer military is a formidable task. To successfully enlist one eligible recruit, the Army must contact approximately 120 young people. The National Research Council explores the various factors that will determine whether the military can realistically expect to recruit an adequate fighting force-one that will meet its upcoming needs. It also assesses the military's expected manpower needs and projects the numbers of youth who are likely to be available over the next 20 years to meet these needs. With clearly written text and useful graphics, Attitudes, Aptitudes, and Aspirations of American Youth offers an overview of important issues for military recruiters, touching on a number of important topics including: sex and race, education and aptitude, physical and moral attributes, and military life and working conditions. In addition, the book looks at how a potential recruit would approach the decision to enlist, considering personal, family, and social values, and the options for other employment or college. Building on the need to increase young Americans' "propensity to enlist," this book offers useful recommendations for increasing educational opportunities while in the service and for developing advertising strategies that include concepts of patriotism and duty to country. Of primary value to military policymakers, recruitment officers, and analysts, Attitudes, Aptitudes, and Aspirations of American Youth will also interest social scientists and policy makers interested in youth trends.

Life in the U.S. Armed Forces

by Anni Baker
Life in the U.S. Armed Forces
Author: Anni Baker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2007-12-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0313070385
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Anni Baker has created a fascinating exploration of life in the armed forces, as it has been experienced by millions of men, women, and children over the past six decades. Her book examines the factors that shape military service and military culture, from grueling training exercises to sexual relations with local women, from overseas duty to the peculiar life of the military brat. The book begins with an examination of the enlistment process, follows the military lifecycle through career decisions, promotions, raising families, and retirement, explores the impact of war on military society, and ends with a discussion of the place of the armed forces in the United States. A wide variety of sources were used in this study, including contemporary scholarship, government and military records, public media, and, most important, interviews and written materials from military personnel, retirees, family members, and civilian employees. Using a lively and readable style, Baker blends clear explanations of elements of military life, information on the development of military society, and the voices of those who serve into an insightful account of this fascinating subculture. It is the author's view that not only is study of the U.S. military a valuable undertaking in itself, but in addition it will enrich our perspective on civilian life and culture in the United States. The military is a distinct society based on a set of common values that are sometimes, though not always, at odds with those of civilian society. The extent to which active duty personnel, family members and civilians internalize these values dictates their comfort with military life and their choice of a military career. Through a discussion of life in the military, Baker examines how the values, traditions and norms of the armed forces are articulated and shared, how they influence the individual and the institution, and what their role is in American society as a whole.

Handbook of Employee Selection

by James L. Farr
Handbook of Employee Selection
Author: James L. Farr
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 1005
Release: 2017-03-27
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 131742638X
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This second edition of the Handbook of Employee Selection has been revised and updated throughout to reflect current thinking on the state of science and practice in employee selection. In this volume, a diverse group of recognized scholars inside and outside the United States balance theory, research, and practice, often taking a global perspective. Divided into eight parts, chapters cover issues associated with measurement, such as validity and reliability, as well as practical concerns around the development of appropriate selection procedures and implementation of selection programs. Several chapters discuss the measurement of various constructs commonly used as predictors, and other chapters confront criterion measures that are used in test validation. Additional sections include chapters that focus on ethical and legal concerns and testing for certain types of jobs (e.g., blue collar jobs). The second edition features a new section on technology and employee selection. The Handbook of Employee Selection, Second Edition provides an indispensable reference for scholars, researchers, graduate students, and professionals in industrial and organizational psychology, human resource management, and related fields.

Military Recruiting: DoD & Services Need Better Data to Enhance Visibility over Recruiter Irregularities

by
Military Recruiting: DoD & Services Need Better Data to Enhance Visibility over Recruiter Irregularities
Author:
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Total Pages: 54
Release: 2006
Genre:
ISBN: 9781422309476
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The viability of the All Volunteer Force (AVF) depends, in large measure, on the Department of Defense's (DOD) ability to successfully recruit several hundred thousand qualified individuals each year to fill over 1,400 occupational specialties. Since the March 2003 involvement of U.S. military forces in Iraq, attracting sufficient numbers of high-quality recruits to military service has proven to be one of the greatest personnel challenges faced by DOD since the inception of the AVF. The active Army, the Army Reserve, and the Navy Reserve, for example, failed to meet their fiscal year 2005 recruiting goals. Recruitment of high-quality personnel is a tough proposition, made even more challenging in the current environment when the nation is engaged in combat operations. To exacerbate the recruitment challenges further, DOD estimates that over half of the youth in the U.S. population between the ages of 16 and 21 do not meet the minimum requirements to enter military service. Moreover, additional factors such as the shrinking numbers of new recruits in delayed entry programs and the Army Army's use of stop loss, which delays servicemembers from leaving active duty, indicate that the components may experience continued recruiting challenges as they attempt to meet their personnel requirements. To help overcome recruiting challenges, the military services during the past several years have assigned roughly 20,000 recruiters to manage their recruiting programs and achieve their accession goals.

Assessing Fitness for Military Enlistment

by National Research Council
Assessing Fitness for Military Enlistment
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2006-02-27
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309164877
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The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) faces short-term and long-term challenges in selecting and recruiting an enlisted force to meet personnel requirements associated with diverse and changing missions. The DoD has established standards for aptitudes/abilities, medical conditions, and physical fitness to be used in selecting recruits who are most likely to succeed in their jobs and complete the first term of service (generally 36 months). In 1999, the Committee on the Youth Population and Military Recruitment was established by the National Research Council (NRC) in response to a request from the DoD. One focus of the committee's work was to examine trends in the youth population relative to the needs of the military and the standards used to screen applicants to meet these needs. When the committee began its work in 1999, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force had recently experienced recruiting shortfalls. By the early 2000s, all the Services were meeting their goals; however, in the first half of calendar year 2005, both the Army and the Marine Corps experienced recruiting difficulties and, in some months, shortfalls. When recruiting goals are not being met, scientific guidance is needed to inform policy decisions regarding the advisability of lowering standards and the impact of any change on training time and cost, job performance, attrition, and the health of the force. Assessing Fitness for Military Enlistment examines the current physical, medical, and mental health standards for military enlistment in light of (1) trends in the physical condition of the youth population; (2) medical advances for treating certain conditions, as well as knowledge of the typical course of chronic conditions as young people reach adulthood; (3) the role of basic training in physical conditioning; (4) the physical demands and working conditions of various jobs in today's military services; and (5) the measures that are used by the Services to characterize an individual's physical condition. The focus is on the enlistment of 18- to 24-year-olds and their first term of service.

Un-American

by Erik Edstrom
Un-American
Author: Erik Edstrom
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2020-05-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1635573750
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"Eloquent, devastating . . . packed with gimlet-eyed analysis - cultural, economic, historical - of how American life came to look the way it does . . . Edstrom's keen observational powers encompass both the physical world and social nuance." -Los Angeles Review of Books A manifesto about America's unchallenged war machine, from an Afghanistan veteran and new kind of military hero. Before engaging in war, Erik Edstrom asks us to imagine three, rarely imagined scenarios: First, imagine your own death. Second, imagine war from “the other side.” Third: Imagine what might have been if the war had never been fought. Pursuing these realities through his own combat experience, Erik reaches the unavoidable conclusion about America at war. But that realization came too late-the damage had been done. Erik Edstrom grew up in suburban Massachusetts with an idealistic desire to make an impact, ultimately leading him to the gates of West Point. Five years later, he was deployed to Afghanistan as an infantry lieutenant. Throughout his military career, he confronted atrocities, buried his friends, wrestled with depression, and struggled with an understanding that the war he fought in, and the youth he traded to prepare for it, was in contribution to a bitter truth: The War on Terror is not just a tragedy, but a crime. The deeper tragedy is that our country lacks the courage and conviction to say so. Un-American is a hybrid of social commentary and memoir that exposes how blind support for war exacerbates the problems it's intended to resolve, devastates the people allegedly being helped, and diverts assets from far larger threats like climate change. Un-American is a revolutionary act, offering a blueprint for redressing America's relationship with patriotism, the military, and military spending.

Handbook of the Life Course

by Michael J. Shanahan
Handbook of the Life Course
Author: Michael J. Shanahan
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 709
Release: 2015-10-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3319208802
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Building on the success of the 2003 Handbook of the Life Course, this second volume identifies future directions for life course research and policy. The introductory essay and the chapters that make up the five sections of this book, show consensus on strategic “next steps” in life course studies. These next steps are explored in detail in each section: Section I, on life course theory, provides fresh perspectives on well-established topics, including cohorts, life stages, and legal and regulatory contexts. It challenges life course scholars to move beyond common individualistic paradigms. Section II highlights changes in major institutional and organizational contexts of the life course. It draws on conceptual advances and recent empirical findings to identify promising avenues for research that illuminate the interplay between structure and agency. It examines trends in family, school, and workplace, as well as contexts that deserve heightened attention, including the military, the criminal justice system, and natural and man-made disaster. The remaining three sections consider advances and suggest strategic opportunities in the study of health and development throughout the life course. They explore methodological innovations, including qualitative and three-generational longitudinal research designs, causal analysis, growth curves, and the study of place. Finally, they show ways to build bridges between life course research and public policy.