The Today's Army Spouse Panel Proof-of-Concept Study: Methodological Report

Abstract

This report documents research and analysis conducted as part of a project entitled Army Spouse Panel, sponsored by the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-9, U.S. Army. The purpose of the project was to provide an operational proof of concept of a panel of Army spouses for short, ondemand survey requests as a mechanism for G-9 and the Army to get focused, timely answers to questions regarding the efficacy of programs and services; if the survey mechanism proves effective, future iterations may be expanded to a panel of soldiers and made available to additional Army HQ offices for Army decisionmaking. This research was conducted within RAND Arroyo Center's Personnel, Training, and Health Program. RAND Arroyo Center, part of the RAND Corporation, is a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) sponsored by the United States Army.RAND operates under a "Federal-Wide Assurance" (FWA00003425) and complies with the Code of Federal Regulations for the Protection of Human Subjects Under United States Law (45 CFR 46), also known as "the Common Rule," as well as with the implementation guidance set forth in DoD Instruction 3216.02. As applicable, this compliance includes reviews and approvals by RAND's Institutional Review Board (the Human Subjects Protection Committee) and by the U.S. Army. The views of sources utilized in this report are solely their own and do not represent the official policy or position of DoD or the U.S. government. Elizabeth Coppola and Emily Warren, detailed to DCS, G-9 from the Army Public Health Center, provided thoughtful feedback on the surveys and data analysis. Richard Fafara and Joseph Trebing, formerly with DCS, G-9, greatly contributed to the initiation of the Army spouse panel.At the RAND Corporation, Carolyn Rutter provided statistical advice, expert consultation, and guidance on how to convey the results. Lisa Wagner helped organize the surveys and administer the project, and Linda Cottrell lent us her programming expertise and familiarity with administrative data sets. AnnaMarie O'Neill helped with the first panel survey and conducted a review of the literature on panels. We also thank Heather Krull, the director of RAND Arroyo Center's Personnel, Training, and Health Program, and Maria Lytell, the associate director, for iv their guidance and advice, as well as for their thoughtful comments on the work. We thank Barbara Bicksler for her editorial help and Kristin Leuschner for her graphics support. We also thank our reviewers, Sarah Meadows at the RAND Corporation and Robert Bozick at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research, Rice University, for their thoughtful suggestions on how to improve this report. Last but definitely not least, we would like to especially thank the Army spouses who participated in the panel surveys. v SummaryArmy leadership and program staff often need timely survey data from a representative sample of Army families to inform policy decisions or to better understand the scope of issues or concerns among Army families. However, timely, representative survey d...