A Message of Gratitude to our Deployment Life Families
After more than four years, and thousands of online surveys and phone interviews, we completed the Deployment Life Study. We are grateful to the individuals and families who gave so much of their time.
In 2014 we prepared a report that describes our study methods and sample of military families for the Department of Defense. This report, entitled The Deployment Life Study Methodological Review and Baseline Sample Description, includes a look at the military families who completed the first Deployment Life survey and provides us with a snapshot of what deployable military families looked like at that time. If you are interested in reading this report, you can access it online:
Of course, the feature that maked the Deployment Life Study unique and exceptionally valuable was that after the initial interviews we continued to survey families every four months over three years. This longitudinal approach enabled us to identify changes that occur over time, during all phases of the deployment cycle: pre-deployment, deployment, and reintegration. If you are interested in reading the final report, you can access it here:
Our findings have also been summarized in two shorter reports that you can find on this website:
As we expected, some families do better than others, benefiting from the opportunities that a military life can offer, while others struggled to overcome the challenges that deployment presents. Across the outcomes that we measured, we did identify characteristics of both the families who thrived as well as families who were more vulnerable. We have shared these findings with stakeholders in order to inform and improve the policies and programs that are in place to best support military families.
Thank you again from all of us on the Deployment Life team. It has been our pleasure to work with such a dedicated community of military families.
Sincerely,
Terri Tanielian, Ben Karney, and Sarah Meadows