Post-Deployment Reintegration Scale: Associations with Organizational Commitment, Job-Related Affect, and Career Intentions.

摘要

For military personnel, the process of post-deployment reintegration can lead to intra- and/or interpersonal changes that may influence the quality of their relationships with family, friends, and coworkers, as well as their attitudes concerning their military career. The current study is part of a program of research investigating the nature and impact of post-deployment reintegration attitudes of Canadian Forces (CF) personnel. More specifically, it first seeks to support the previously established psychometric properties of a post-deployment reintegration measure in a separate sample of CF personnel. Second, this research explores the postdeployment reintegration attitudes of these personnel in three key areas: personal, family, and work reintegration, as well as the relationship of people's reintegration attitudes to their commitment to the military, job-related affect, and career intentions. In the study, 519 CF personnel completed the 36-item Post-Deployment Reintegration Scale (PDRS). Results provided further support for the validity of the measure. More specifically, higher levels of positive reintegration attitudes among these CF members, especially in the work domain, were associated with higher levels of attachment and other positive feelings toward work and the military. Conversely, higher levels of members' negative reintegration attitudes were related to greater feelings of obligation (as opposed to desire) to remain in the military (in the family area only), higher levels of negative job-related affect (particularly in the work domain), and greater intentions to leave the military (in the work domain only). These results are discussed in terms of their implications for important personal and organizational level outcomes, as well as the importance of recognizing the permeable boundaries of work-family life in a military context.