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7. Determinants of Intention or Propensity
Pages 190-217

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From page 190...
... Although no correlation was reported, these investigators concluded that "positively propensed high school seniors are applying to enter the military about five times as lit should be noted that the Monitoring the Future propensity measures asking for expectations of serving in the military service occurs near the end of the senior year of high school. By that time, many seniors already have made a formal commitment to serve, and others have taken at least some steps in that direction.
From page 191...
... , is extremely similar to the psychosocial construct of intention, and that intention has played a central role in many behavioral theories,2 in this chapter we use behavioral theory to help explain why some young adults are, and some are not, inclined to join the military. More specifically, we briefly review some behavioral theories and describe an integrated model of behavioral prediction.
From page 192...
... According to this model, the likelihood that someone will adopt or continue to engage in a given behavior is primarily a function of two factors. First, the person must feel personally threatened by some perceived outcome, such as poor job prospects in the civilian labor market.
From page 193...
... An Integrated Theoretical Model Looking at Figure 7-1, it can be seen that any given behavior, such as enlisting in the military, is most likely to occur if one has a strong intention to perform that behavior, if one has the necessary skills and abilities (i.e., meets military enlistment standards) , and if there are no environmental constraints preventing behavioral performance.
From page 194...
... ~|/r~' If'' I- f ' / intention but are not acting on it, a successful intervention will be directed either at skill building or at removing environmental constraints. If strong intentions to perform the behavior in question have not been formed, the model suggests three primary determinants of intention to consider: the attitude toward performing the behavior, perceived norms concerning performance of the behavior, and one's self-efficacy with respect to performing the behavior.
From page 195...
... For example, one's life experience will influence what one believes about performing a given behavior, and thus one often finds relations between such demographic variables as gender, ethnicity, age, education, socioeconomic status, and behavioral performance. Similarly, young adults who are unemployed may have very different beliefs about joining the military from those who are em
From page 196...
... Similarly, rich and poor, old and young, those who do and do not plan to go to college, those with favorable and unfavorable attitudes toward law enforcement, and those who have or have not used drugs may hold different attitudinal, normative, or self-efficacy beliefs with respect to one behavior but may hold similar beliefs with respect to another. Thus, there is no necessary relation between these distal or background variables and any given behavior.
From page 197...
... For example, the population of men between ages 18 and 25 will include men varying in ethnicity, income, education, age, family history, and beliefs. Information about intended audiences can be obtained through national or local survey data or through formative research, which involves data collection on audiences' sociodemographic characteristics, behavioral predictors or antecedents such as audience beliefs, values, skills, attitudes, and current behaviors.
From page 198...
... Once this has been done, survey data can be used to identify the beliefs that discriminate between those who do or do not intend to perform the behavior in question (Hornik and Woolf, 1999~. APPLICATION OF BEHAVIORAL THEORY TO MILITARY RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION Despite the fact that propensity, as measured by most investigators, has repeatedly been found to be the best single predictor of enlistment, and despite the fact that propensity can best be viewed as a measure of intention to join the military, there have been very few attempts to use behavioral theories, such as those presented above, as a framework for predicting and understanding propensity.
From page 199...
... Because the paper was concerned with comparing various models, the researchers measured only attitude, subjective norm, intention, and behavior. Consistent with expectations, the men's intention to "reenlist in the National Guard when my present enrollment expires" was highly correlated with their actual reenlistment (R = 0.67, p < 0.001~.
From page 200...
... " Those who say "definitely" or "probably" for at least one of the four services are said to have expressed "positive propensity" for military service; those who say they will "probably not" or "definitely not" join, along with those who say they "don't know" or decline to answer, are said to have "negative propensity." In 1991, 34 percent of males ages 16-21 were "positively propensed." This dropped to a low of 26 percent in 1997 and 1998 and then showed a slight increase to 29 percent in 1999. More recently, respondents have also been asked about the likelihood that they would be serving on active duty "in the military." Predicting Propensity to Enlist from MTF Data One major attempt to look at the psychosocial determinants of propensity and enlistment has been done by Bachman et al.
From page 201...
... Indeed, although one can identify hundreds of demographic, economic, and psychosocial variables that may or may not influence any behavioral decision, as we saw above, behavioral theories suggest that there is only a limited number of variables that serve as critical determinants of any given behavior. Consistent with this, MTF data suggest that young adults' attitudes toward the military as a workplace are highly correlated with propensity.
From page 202...
... Moreover, it can be seen that beliefs were more important determinants of propensity than were values. TABLE 7-1 Prediction of Propensity from Job Attributes R2 Significance Importance 0.154 NS Belief 0.270 p < 0.02 Belief x Importance 0.304 p < 0.005 SOURCE: Data from the Youth Attitude Tracking Study.
From page 203...
... Since it is possible that the failure of these attributes to emerge as factors influencing propensity could be due to issues of multicolinearity, and since it is probably not appropriate to consider each job attribute as independent, the committee decided it was important to examine the extent to which these 26 attributes represent more general, underlying dimensions. Given the amount of missing data, we were unable to arrive at a meaningful factor solution using traditional factor analysis.
From page 204...
... That is, since all attributes are phrased positively and represent valued outcomes, the higher the estimated belief score, the more likely it is that one will obtain a valued outcome. Thus one would expect the estimated belief x importance product to improve prediction over and above the estimated belief score only when importance is also a significant predictor of propensity.
From page 205...
... Adventure l ~ ~ / .33 \.44 l .11 ~ For Country ~ Patriotic ~ .23 I Adventure / ~,,\~ 205 + .12 \ \ .34 \~67 Probability of Serving in Military .21 \^ .13 .44 U.S. Travel + .05 Probability of Serving in Military ~9 I Travel Be Proud Of .12 ~ .58 | Proud Of | FIGURE 7-2a Predicting propensity from the importance of patriotic adventure.
From page 206...
... chi = 275.385, df = 38, p = 0.000, rmsea = 0.025, TLI = 0.990 SOURCE: Data from the Youth Attitude Tracking Study. Similarly, the more the women believed that they would be more likely to get "patriotic adventure" by joining the military, the higher their propensity to enlist (R2 = 0.05~.
From page 207...
... / .30 / \ Patriotic Adventure I ~ .37 .48 \.47 ~ .23 ~ .22 ~ .21 Probability of Serving in Military ~ 1 Hi, + .13 Probability of Serving in Military I Adventure I | Physical | | Foreign | | For | | U S ~ Challenge ~ ~ Travel ~ Entry I I Travel 207 .~ ~ .46 1~ ·~u _ .48 | Be | |Proud Of | FIGURE 7-2c Predicting propensity from the expectancy-value score associated with patriotic adventure. chi = 165.376, df = 38, p = 0.000, rmsea = 0.018, TLI = 0.993 SOURCE: Data from the Youth Attitude Tracking Study.
From page 208...
... There it can be seen that only the importance of "patriotic adventure" significantly contributes to propensity. In contrast, when beliefs are considered and when importance ratings are weighted by the belief that the attributes defining a given dimension are more likely to be obtained in the military than in civilian life, four of the five dimensions are found to significantly contribute to propensity.
From page 209...
... 15 \ Incentives ~ /W at\ /t 'A ·2/ .40/ ~ .08 ~ .16 ~ c | Hi-Tech | | Environment | Money for Education 4n Good Pay . 1 :3~ r .23 ~ .2 ~ I Job l | Security | 209 ~ .02 Probability of Serving in Military 4.20 | | Earn | | | Respect | .02 Probability of Serving in Military 1 ~ 1 ~ .1 Parents' Approval Earn Respect r FIGURE 7-3a Predicting propensity from the importance of external incentives.
From page 210...
... 1 \ \\ ~ n7 ~ \ \~57 .14 ~ .22 | Job | | Parents' I I Earn | Security | | Approval | ~4 .21 \~ .32 .45 | Good Pay 1 , 1 l O ~ .25 | Job | | Security | ~ .10 Probability of Serving in Military ~ .~.38 Parents' Approval ~ · ~ 1 Earn Respect FIGURE 7-3b Predicting propensity from the belief that joining the military will lead to external incentives. chi = 84.003, p = 0.000, df = 38, rmsea = 0.011, TLI = 0.998 SOURCE: Data from the Youth Attitude Tracking Study.
From page 211...
... DETERMINANTS OF INTENTION OR PROPENSITY Males | External l\ Incentives >a Or .19 an, .43 ~ Probability of Serving in Military /~r~\\ ~ .44/ ,~8 ~.19 ~.22 46 48~4 .46 ~ Hi-Tech Environment Females Money for Education Good Pay 11 ~ 1 ~ 1 Job Security Earn Respect External ~ .32 ncentives // .1~9 Hi-Tech Environment Money for Education | Good Pay 211 Parents' Approval 'A''~' ~ T\\\ 148 \.53 \44\: ~ .11 Probability of Serving in Military I r .23 ~ .28 ~ .19 \~ .35 I | Job | | -~ ~ I I A_ l | Security | | Parents' Approval tarn Respect FIGURE 7-3c Predicting propensity from the expectancy-value score associated with external incentives. chi = 101.661, p = 0.000, df = 38, rmsea = 0.013, TLI = 0.997 SOURCE: Data from the Youth Attitude Tracking Study.
From page 212...
... a number of external incentives (e.g., money for education, good pay, job security, parents' approval) from the military than from civilian life.
From page 213...
... external incentives had little to do with propensity, the more one believes that he or she is more likely to obtain these incentives in the military (compared with a civilian job) , the more likely one is to have a positive propensity to join the military.
From page 214...
... In marked contrast, we can again see that the value these young adults place on parental approval plays little or no role in influencing their propensity to enlist. These findings indicate that, at any given point in time, the greater the number of young people who value "patriotism" and who think that the "opportunity for adventure" is important, the greater should be the number of young people who have a positive propensity to join the military.
From page 215...
... More specifically, the net percentage attributing "doing something for the country" to the military rather than civilian jobs (i.e., the percentage attribution to the military minus the percentage attribution to civilian jobs) declined from 37 percent in 1992 to -5 percent in 1999 for men and from 39 percent in 1992 to -17 percent in 1999 for women.
From page 216...
... As another example, consider the attribute of "getting money for education." Although the value of educational attainment has significantly increased over the past decade, the value young adults place on "getting money for education" has remained very high and has not changed over time. Once again, however, there has been an erosion in the belief that one is more likely to get money for education from the military than from civilian life and a corresponding increase in the belief that one is equally or more likely to get money for education from a civilian job.
From page 217...
... Issues of advertising and recruitment are addressed more fully in Chapter 8. SUMMARY In this chapter we have tried to show that proper application of behavioral theory can help to increase understanding of the factors influencing propensity and enlistment.


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