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Troop Morale Survey

By The Armorer on July 19, 2006 | | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (1)

First off - all the usual caveats about self-selecting surveys (they tend to skew because people who feel strongly one way or the other tend to select, vice the ones who care a lot less).

No huge surprise - the officers and the enlisted have, um, *differing* perceptions of things. I think the most interesting data are those for the junior officers - they have officer attitudes, are closest to the action, and have not yet been fully acculturated to caution.

Seventy-four percent of Stripes military readers in Iraq who responded to a readership survey said fighting the war for America was “very” or “somewhat” worthwhile. About a quarter of the respondents said it was “not very worthwhile” or “not worthwhile at all.”

Here's a little bit about the disconnect:

While half of the respondents between the ranks of E-1 and E-6 said their unit’s morale was somewhat low or very low, 82 percent of the commissioned officers who responded said they believed their unit’s morale was high or very high. The percentage of these officers rating their unit's morale as somewhat low or very low was 15 percent. Seventy-four percent of readers with ranks from E-7 to E-9 plus warrant officers rated their unit’s morale as high or very high.

This is the bit that I think is perhaps most useful - the junior officers, who are closest to the action yet should be invested in victory, so to speak - are not as sanguine about things in Iraq as their bosses are.

At the same time, although they rated their morale high, the junior officers, O-1 through O-3, were less inclined than others to feel that conditions in Iraq had improved compared to when they first arrived. Forty-eight percent of these officers believed conditions in the country had improved; 44 percent felt the conditions were the same or worse. Sixty-seven percent of enlisted believed conditions had improved, while 69 percent of officers O-4, or major, and above believed conditions had improved.

As a pulse check, fodder for further data collection. What say you guys?

If you can get to it, you can read the whole thing here (oddly enough, from behind the firewall at Fort Leavenworth, you can't *get* to the Stars and Stripes website, while I can from home and the corporate office).

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S&S Troop Morale Survey from Soldiers' Angels Germany on July 19, 2006 11:37 AM

Here's some of the results in graphs. Follow the links for related stories. For Milblogger analysis and discussion, head over to John's post at the Castle. One very postive result of note: Read More

4 Comments

By cw4(ret)billt on July 19, 2006 7:36 PM
The disconnect between the E-1 through E-6 opinions (morale somewhat low to very low) and the E-7 through Ossifer opinions (morale high to very high) is the disparity between morale and ésprit. A unit's morale can be in the hopper and the troops can still demonstrate an amazing ésprit de corps...
 
By Trias on July 20, 2006 5:21 AM
I had to look up this EO thing and half the other wierd terms. Here's a few things that strike me; 1) This is not a universal survey. How would this skew results. ie how much are readers and responders of stars and stripes representitive? 2)It looks like junior officers are evaluating morale based on what they see in their direct underlings excessively negatively whereas the higher officers are doing so excessively optimistically. I am wondering why. 3) It'd be nice to know where all those numbers sat before the war. 4) It concerns me only half view interactions in Iraq as positive. That will not improve the insurgency situation imo. 5) It looks like there is asome kind of cultural divide between set 'E' and set 'O'
 
By Oldloadr on July 20, 2006 6:26 AM
1. There is a cultural disconnect between Os and Es and the Military establishment wants it that way. On the face of it, it sounds feudal, and it is, but even having spent 24 years as an E, I can’t think of a better system that our society and institutions could support. 2. Since I spent a large amount of my active duty time in the E-7 through E-9 demographic, I understand that disconnect. The younger GIs tend to associate happiness with morale. Once you have spent some time on active duty, you start to understand that the relationship between morale and happiness is casual, at best. I remember reading somewhere that Napoleon didn’t worry when his troops grumbled, but rather when they stopped grumbling. 3. While I agree that these types of poles are prone to being skewed, the Stars and Stripes is provided free in the combat zones and is readily available at all chow halls. Therefore, it might not be as skewed as other poles of this type. On the other hand, the pole would have been more informative if “Stripes” had told us the respondents’ unit type (support versus combat arms). It was my antidotal experience that the soldiers that went outside the wire on a regular basis had higher morale and greater sense of purpose than the support personnel known in Iraq as “FOB Dwellers.”
 
By Lunatic on July 20, 2006 7:21 AM
Trias said: "2)It looks like junior officers are evaluating morale based on what they see in their direct underlings excessively negatively whereas the higher officers are doing so excessively optimistically. I am wondering why." Not really a mystery to my mind -- isn't it because higher management ALWAYS want to think they're in charge of a happy team and doing a good job, and because they are more distant from having to deal with the problems on the ground. Middle management are closer to the actual problems, and aware that they're the ones who will catch it in the neck from higher management if things go really visibly wrong.