This overview of the findings from the RAND Deployment Life Study describes the effects of deployment on marital relationships, family environment, psychological and behavioral health, child well-being, and military integration.
In 2009, the RAND Corporation launched the Deployment Life Study, a longitudinal study of military families across a deployment cycle. This culminating report reviews the study design and data collection procedures, then presents results from analyses of the data collected from some 2,700 military families, focusing on marital relationships, family environment, psychological and behavioral health, child well-being, and military integration.
The Deployment Life Study was designed to provide a deeper understanding of military family readiness and its sources. This report describes the theoretical model that informed the study design, the content of the baseline assessment, the design and procedures associated with data collection, sampling and recruiting procedures, and the baseline sample of military families.
The analyses described in this article compare associations between prior deployments and current marital satisfaction across four different ways of measuring prior deployment within a large and representative sample of married Army service members and their spouses.
Drawing upon data from the Deployment Life Study, this article examines whether female military spouses (SPs) are disadvantaged relative to matched civilian peers in terms of hours worked and earnings, paying particular attention to gaps among the highest educated women.
Deployment can be a significant source of stress for military families. Understanding how families prepare in the face of such stress, and which families are less likely to prepare, is a priority of the Department of Defense.
The appropriate format for services supporting military families depends on how vulnerabilities and resources are distributed across and within those families.
Sleep problems among spouses of military service members were reported at rates higher than the general population and were associated with more symptoms of depression.
