The Army has asked more than 35,000 soldiers to prioritize services offered by their installations via an online survey, but a new approach to the questions could give greater insight to Army planners dealing with dwindling budgets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soldier feedback could impact the Army’s future funding decisions, however the survey is not intended as a popularity contest, said Carra Sims, lead researcher on the project for RAND Corp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“There are services that a relatively small part of the population needs that are still going to be very important, like the Exceptional Family Member Program, things like that,” Sims said. “This is only part of the puzzle in terms of figuring out those questions, but actually asking the soldiers themselves what they value is something that has been missing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
RAND is conducting the survey under the sponsorship of the Office of the Assistant Chief for Installation Management and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead of providing a list of services for soldiers to rank or quizzing them on areas that have nothing to do with their daily lives, the Today’s Soldier Survey asks for a bit of demographic information first, then poses questions tailored to specific challenges and needs soldiers might face, how they’ve sought help to address those needs, and whether they’ve used Army resources to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Respondents are then asked to rank the importance of the services they’ve identified, Sims said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The topic areas come from previous soldier surveys, Sims said, but they’re addressed with a new approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We’re coming at it from more of a 30,000-feet perspective,” Sims said. “We’re asking about services in a fairly generic way. We don’t ask about specific programs. … We ask about challenges, and then we ask, for these specific challenges, what are the most vital needs that you had?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The technique allows data-miners to consider factors that go missing when soldiers are asked simply to rank the most important base services. In this survey, soldiers could report that their issues are solved by off-base or nonmilitary agencies, for example, allowing planners to focus their limited funds on other projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also identifies potential problem areas that could go overlooked by other surveys. A poll that asks soldiers whether they’ve used Army-sponsored family counseling, for instance, would turn up a small response set, but if soldiers are asked, “Do you have issues with growing apart, or realignment of roles coming back from deployment?” it could open the door to potential family-program needs, Sims said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“This survey is a path for Soldiers to help senior Army leaders understand the Soldier’s point of view,” according to an Army statement on the poll. “We need to understand how Soldiers prioritize problems and how they address those problems.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The anonymous survey, spread over about 45 installations, began at the end of September and runs through December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some results will be compiled by spring, Sims said, with a full report by the fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Only soldiers who receive an email asking them to participate can weigh in. It averages less than 20 minutes, Sims said, and even covers a topic of interest to those tired of clicking boxes and ranking things on a 10-point scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“One of the questions in our survey is how many surveys or focus groups have you been tasked for this year,” she said. “Because at least to my knowledge, there isn’t a whole lot of data on this. … It’s really hard to get a handle on how many invitations these soldiers are getting.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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