Evaluation of Relationships Between Reported Resilience and Soldier Outcomes. Report #1: Negative Outcomes (Suicide, Drug Use, & Violent Crimes)

Abstract

This document is the first of a series of reports evaluating the impact of the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) Program by examining relationships between reported resilience and various health and behavioral outcomes (both positive and negative) among Soldiers. The first set of deidentified Global Assessment Tool data made available for analysis included responses from Soldiers who completed suicide in 2010, Soldiers who tested positive for illicit drug use, and Soldiers who were charged with engaging in violent crimes. Our analyses suggest that Soldiers who completed suicide were less resilient than Soldiers who did not commit suicide; Soldiers who tested positive for illicit drug use were less resilient than Soldiers who did not test positive; and Soldiers who committed violent crimes were less resilient than those who did not commit violent crimes. The results of these analyses held when researchers controlled for potential demographic effects.

A Critical Examination of the U.S. Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Program

“…Thus, every year, and for every component of the GAT, some percentage-whose value depends only on where the reporting threshold is set-of subjects will be told that they need to improve on that component, regardless of any prior improvements in the absolute level of that component that those subjects, or the Army as a whole, might have made. Confirmation of this approach can be found in Lester, Harms, Bulling, et al (2011a), in which an apparently positive Likert-scale score of 3.84 out of 5 is shown with a red bar ("facing some significant challenges") because it is slightly lower than the average score for the comparison group (see Figure 2). Thus, the GAT will always "reveal" that large numbers of soldiers are facing "significant challenges"-and, hence, are deemed to be in need of further resilience training-by a process that appears to consist of circular reasoning.…”

“…The first of these (Lester, Harms, Bulling, et al, 2011a) demonstrated that soldiers who committed suicide,…”

“…Only S. L. Smith (2013) has directly queried whether the program is likely to meet its expected outcomes, asking whether attempting to inculcate resilience in soldiers might not, in some circumstances, have the opposite effect. In summary, very little original, critical research on the general scientific validity of CSF has been published to date in peer-reviewed fora; even the U.S. Army's own official reports on the interim findings of the program (Lester, Harms, Bulling, Herian, & Spain, 2011a, 2011bLester, Harms, Herian, Krasikova, & Beal, 2011;Harms, Herian, Krasikova, Vanhove, & Lester, 2013) have only been published on U.S. Government websites. This seems quite remarkable given the ambitious scale of the program, involving a budget many times larger than anything that most psychological researchers will see in their entire careers, and its portentous implications for positive psychology and indeed a whole raft of other "positive" social interventions hypothesized by Seligman and Fowler (2011, p. 85).…”

“…Thus, the GAT will always "reveal" that large numbers of soldiers are facing "significant challenges"-and, hence, are deemed to be in need of further resilience training-by a process that appears to consist of circular reasoning. [iv] A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE U.S. ARMY'S COMPREHENSIVE SOLDIER FITNESS PROGRAM : SOCIAL SCIENCES Figure 2 Example GAT soldier report (Lester, Harms, Bulling, et al, 2011a, p. 35)…”

“…However, the report by Lester, Harms, Bulling, et al (2011a) revealed some interesting information about the psychometric structure of CSF. Table C-1 on p. 36 shows the correlations between the GAT subscales and their associated "fitness" dimensions, with "Spiritual Fitness" being correlated .619 with "Emotional Fitness" and .546 with "Social Fitness," and these last two being correlated .693 with each other.…”