Attrition During Training in the Army Reserve and Army National Guard

This Note describes the analysis of attrition behavior of Army Reservists and National Guardsmen during the period of initial training. During FY 1977 and FY 1978, over 100,000 nonprior-service individuals entered the reserves for training. Approximately 30 percent of these individuals left the service prior to the completion of training. This analysis estimates the attrition probability for enlistees with differing entrance characteristics using logit regression analysis. The characteristics used in the analysis include educational attainment, race, sex, age, aptitude scores, and marital status. The results show that a combination of education and aptitude scores are the strongest predictors of training attrition. Lower educational attainment and lower aptitude scores lead to higher levels of attrition. Other things equal, men have lower attrition than women and blacks have lower attrition than nonblacks. Marital status and age appear not to markedly affect attrition probabilities.