Toward an Understanding of the Role of Incentives in Enlisted Recruiting

Level-Loading of Enlisted Accessions

“…The data suggest that these two factors roughly offset each other, so that the actual proportion of NF recruits that ship in a given month is very close to the proportion of NF recruits that intend to ship in that month. 4 In other words, the Navy has been fairly successful at maintaining a flow of accessions that is close to the level expected when recruits enter the DEP. Therefore, we focus on intended ship date, since the expectation of recruits when entering the DEP is that they will actually ship on this date.…”

“…In particular, see figure 5 of [4]. 4. For example, there is an almost perfect correlation (0.92) between the proportion of NF recruits that intend to ship during the summer and the proportion of NF recruits that actually ship during the summer.…”

“…Throughout this document, "ship date" refers to the intended ship date when entering the Delayed Entry Program. As [4] shows, a large number of NF recruits ship on different dates than originally intended. 3 Furthermore, some NF recruits are reclassified and ship in another rating, while others attrite from DEP before they ship.…”

“…As [4] discusses, however, the Nuclear Field is the only program toward which recruiters have reason to target their recruiting efforts. NF recruiters are given specific monthly recruiting goals for the Nuclear Field, providing them with a direct incentive to meet these goals.…”

Increasing the Enlistment Bonus Cap and MOS Channeling Effects

“…Having information on these requirements is important because they impact the estimated relationship between incentives and enlistment behavior and, consequently, the accuracy of forecasted classification effects. This was a major difficulty encountered in recent research examining the effect of enlistment incentives on rating choice in the Navy (Golfin, 2003). Finally, because practically all applicant MEPS transactions were included in the database, estimation and forecasting analyses directly benefited from a large and representative sample of the Army's applicant pool.…”