This report provides an overview of data sources that contain information on the harmful behaviors of domestic abuse, prohibited discrimination, sexual assault and sexual harassment, substance use, and suicide, as well as their risk factors and protective factors. The report also provides recommendations for addressing key data gaps and limitations.

Inventorying Data to Support Army Harmful Behavior Prevention Metrics and Measures

Kirsten M. Keller, Kimberly Curry Hall, Kelly Hyde, Sierra Smucker, Linda Cottrell, Grace Tang, Hunter Stoll

ResearchPublished Aug 30, 2024

Having accurate data to better understand the occurrence and frequency of harmful behaviors, including factors that increase or decrease the likelihood that they occur, is critical to the Army's primary prevention efforts of stopping harmful behaviors before they occur. This report identifies more than 50 Department of Defense (DoD) and Army data sources that contain information on the specific harmful behaviors of domestic abuse, prohibited discrimination, sexual assault and sexual harassment, substance use, and suicide, as well as their risk factors and protective factors.

The report also provides recommendations for addressing key gaps and challenges in data collection and use of these data sources, such as refining current data collection efforts through a better understanding of relevant risk and protective factors, better integrating data sources to make them more useful, and improving access to data for the prevention workforce and others who are involved in harmful behavior prevention efforts. Importantly, rather than suggesting the Army undertake significant additional data collection efforts, the report emphasizes the need for improved data collection refinement, integration, and access across DoD.

Key Findings

  • Data on harmful behaviors, including their risk and protective factors, are often tracked in different data sources that are owned by different organizations. This limits the use of these data in obtaining a comprehensive picture of these behaviors.
  • DoD surveys, which have been designed to provide better estimates of prevalence, can still have limitations, such as low response rates and changes in measures over time. The surveys' limited frequency and the lag times between data collection and the publication of results might also limit the suitability of survey data for quick-response prevention efforts. In addition, at the time of this study, there was a gap in being able to provide accurate prevalence estimates for domestic abuse.
  • Although numerous individual-level risk factors are tracked in data sources, there was less information about community-oriented or environmental factors, and data are lacking on protective factors.
  • Demographic variables, particularly race and ethnicity, are not always collected in a standardized way across sources. In addition, data on organizational-level behavior (e.g., command, unit) are often not included or standardized across years, which can limit analysis.
  • The ability to conduct longitudinal analyses can be limited by changes in data collection procedures and the extent to which individuals can be tracked over time.
  • There is a lack of knowledge about which data sources are available and how to access them. This means that individuals might use whatever data sources are easily accessible regardless of their suitability.

Recommendations

  • Explore ways to facilitate better data-sharing and integration to provide a more comprehensive picture of harmful behaviors.
  • Explore ways to modify or build on existing efforts to make more-frequent and more-recent survey data on harmful behavior occurrences available, such as administering minimal pared-down versions of existing surveys.
  • Advocate that DoD incorporate a measure of domestic abuse into its confidential surveys.
  • Ensure that personnel involved in prevention of harmful behaviors receive guidance on available data sources, including which data sources are the most appropriate for certain purposes and any limitations to their use.
  • Continue to research community-based and environmental risk factors and potential protective factors for harmful behaviors and integrate relevant existing data into prevention efforts.
  • Standardize demographic categories across data sources and include organizational-level identifiers in data sources, without raising confidentiality issues, to enable analyses at these levels.
  • Ensure that the reliability and validity of survey measures have been analyzed and that those critical measures are maintained over time to facilitate longitudinal analyses.
  • Leverage the work from this report to maintain a list of key data sources that includes documentation of who can be granted what type of access and the process for receiving permission.

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Document Details

  • Copyright: RAND Corporation
  • Availability: Available
  • Year: 2024
  • Print Format: Paperback
  • Paperback Pages: 76
  • Paperback Price: $32.50
  • Paperback ISBN/EAN: 1-9774-1381-1
  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.7249/RRA2368-1
  • Document Number: RR-A2368-1

Citation

RAND Style Manual
Keller, Kirsten M., Kimberly Curry Hall, Kelly Hyde, Sierra Smucker, Linda Cottrell, Grace Tang, and Hunter Stoll, Inventorying Data to Support Army Harmful Behavior Prevention Metrics and Measures, RAND Corporation, RR-A2368-1, 2024. As of September 4, 2024: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2368-1.html
Chicago Manual of Style
Keller, Kirsten M., Kimberly Curry Hall, Kelly Hyde, Sierra Smucker, Linda Cottrell, Grace Tang, and Hunter Stoll, Inventorying Data to Support Army Harmful Behavior Prevention Metrics and Measures. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2024. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2368-1.html. Also available in print form.
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The research described in this report was sponsored by the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-1, U.S. Army and conducted by the Personnel, Training, and Health Program within the RAND Arroyo Center.

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