Relationship of Enlistment Intentions to Enlistment in Active Duty Services

This Note presents work on the relationship between enlistment intention information and active duty enlistments. Earlier RAND research demonstrated a significant relationship between nonprior-service respondents' stated enlistment intentions in the Youth Attitude Tracking Study (YATS) and their actual subsequent enlistment actions. Since women were not included in the YATS initially, the research was based on results for nonprior-service men. This Note highlights the men's results and reports and compares results for female and male respondents in recent YATS waves. The results indicate that enlistment intention information is useful for both sexes. However, they suggest it is probably less helpful for women than for men. The results also indicate that people stating negative enlistment intentions are an important source of enlistees, and that simple comparisons of positive intention rates for the two sexes can overstate women's interest in military service.