Shared Values: Measuring Value Differences between Civilians and Soldiers

摘要

In recent times all branches of the military have come under increased publicscrutiny in response to personnel behavioral and operational shortcomings. In response to this many within and outside of the military have attributed these problems to the absence of personal values among new service members that are congruent with the military's core values. If such a condition is true it changes the nature of America's civil military relations. The relationship between a democracy and its military remains precarious by design. The latter must forgo valued freedoms in order to guarantee them for the former. Historically having a social representative military has ensured the military serves larger society, and not its own interest. Having established a large standing army America relied on national conscription to ensure social representation. The advent of the All Volunteer Force in 1973 marked a new reliance on the competition for manpower between the military and industry, college, etc. to guarantee adequate social representation. This research stands as an exploratory effort to assess the degree of social representativeness of the military by measuring value difference between a convenience sample of soldiers, untrained recruits, and college students. My findings indicate first that recent value problems are not random value conflicts but reflect systemic value differences.