The purpose of this research is to investigate influence of the social demographics of new generation solders, self esteem and stress from military life, concerning successful adjustment to military life. The results of the study are intended to find ...
The purpose of this research is to investigate influence of the social demographics of new generation solders, self esteem and stress from military life, concerning successful adjustment to military life. The results of the study are intended to find ways to strengthen speedy adjustment to military life, and search to improve methodology for satisfactory military rehabilitation program planning.
For the purpose of this study, actively serving short term members of Air Force ○○ of the Combat Flying Corps were used as subjects. The subjects were given questionnaires, and 459 of the returned answers were used for analysis as well as measurement of self esteem, measurement of stresses of military life, and measurement of adjustment to military life. The said questionnaire was prepared by using the SPSS WIN 14.0 program, descriptive statistics, t-test, quantitative analysis, correlation analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis.
The principle results of this study are as follows:
First, general characteristics of new generation soldiers are that 90% of them are between age 18 and 22, sergeant ranking, entered the army while attending 4 year colleges, had no religions, had no girlfriends, and there were more soldiers who were uncertain about their future than soldiers who were certain. They gave relatively positive assessment about their self esteem, experienced normal levels of stress concerning military life, and their adaptation to military life scored relatively in the upper middle level.
Second, adaptation to military life showed meaningful differences according to social demographics: age, class, existence of a girlfriend, and knowledge of a future after dismissal from the army. There were meaningful differences between the averages of two compared groups, one with high self esteem and low self esteem, and one with low stress from military life and high stress.
Third, when social demographics, self esteem, stress from military life were inputted hierarchically to recognize influencing factors of adaptation to military life of new generation soldiers, the results showed that the lower the age, the lower the class, the more certain the future after dismissal from the army, and the higher the self esteem. Adaptation to military life showed high positive correlation and the higher the stress from official duties and roles, the more negative correlation to adaptation to military life.
Therefore, to explain based only on the results of this study, adaptation to military life of new generation soldiers is most closely related with stress from military life. Either the factors that induce stress should be eliminated or the soldiers should be helped to learn how to deal appropriately through social interventions such as crisis intervention, case management, and group counselling. Such interventions can enhance lifestyle satisfaction and will to carry their duties out, help them to be loyal to their duties and responsibilities, and improve adaptation to military life, thus helping them to be satisfied with life circumstances in the military organization, which finally contributes to creating healthy military culture and preventing incidents. These efforts would increase their own satisfaction and responsibility for their task, ultimately would assist new generation soldiers with better military life adaptation.