In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of service members saw an innocuous-looking email pop into their official inbox urging their participation in a “workplace study and survey.” Those who clicked the link found questions focusing on issues of sexual assault — in explicit and graphic detail. The official survey is part of a forcewide campaign to get fresh input on what life is really like in military offices and workplaces around the world. Here are five things to know:
1. You choose where to respond. The Web-based survey, launched in August, is designed so troops can forward the email invite to their own smartphone or home computer and complete it in a setting of their choice. The survey, commissioned by the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office and conducted by the Rand Corp., is confidential and should take about 10 minutes to complete.
2. 550,000 asked to participate. Survey invites went out to more than 550,000 service members, including all women and about 20 percent of men selected at random. It was sent to enlisted members as well as officers up through the O-6 paygrade. Unit-level leaders are encouraging their troops to take it regardless of whether they’ve personally experienced a sexual assault. Service members who did not get an invite but want to participate can contact support@randmilitarystudy.org to request login information.
3. Questions are explicit. Many of the questions ask respondents to describe in great detail any experience they may have had with sexual assault or harassment. Questions reference specific body parts and aim to capture a full picture of the type and nature of sex assaults that may be occurring in military workplaces. Army Maj. James Brindle, a Pentagon spokesman, acknowledged that some questions “are of an adult nature,” but “identifying problems in the workplace sometimes requires frank and honest discussion.”
4. Future policy affected. The survey initially was requested by President Obama last year after he ordered Pentagon leaders to place a new priority on the issue of sexual assault. The results will likely influence future policy decisions and help shape efforts to prevent and respond to sex assaults. The goal, Brindle said, “is to discover gaps so we can reassess our efforts and ultimately solve problems that exist in the workplace.” Results will go to the White House in December as part of a broader report on the military’s sex assault response efforts.
5. Focusing on details. This is the Defense Department’s most far-reaching effort to date to get reliable data on the nature and prevalence of sexual assault in the military. Previous forcewide surveys have included limited questions. In 2012, for example, a “Workplace and Gender Relations Survey” asked whether individual troops had experienced “unwanted sexual touching” in the past 12 months. About 6.1 percent of women and 1.2 percent of men said yes. But that data was criticized in part due to the ambiguous wording of the question, which ostensibly ran the gamut from rape to an inappropriate slap on the butt.
