Background and Objectives Transitioning from military to civilian life can be challenging for families, but most research focuses only on the service member. We applied a life course model to assess spouse well-being following this important transition. Design Prospective, longitudinal survey of service members and their spouses Methods We captured three spouse well-being domains: psychological health, physical health, and family relationships. We identified differences between families who separated from service and those still affiliated (N = 4,087) and assessed baseline factors associated with spouse well-being after the family separated from service (N = 1,199). Results Spouses of service members who had separated from the military (versus those who had not) reported poorer mental health and family relationship quality at baseline and follow-up. After controlling for baseline differences, spouses whose families transitioned experienced a greater increase in PTSD symptoms and a steeper decline in quality of marriage. Spouses of active-duty service members reported greater increases in work-family conflict. Among families who had transitioned, the most consistent predictor of positive outcomes was baseline well-being. Protective factors included having more psychological and social resources and less financial stress. Conclusions Several protective and risk factors identified in the study may inform programming for families transitioning from active duty.

BACKGROUND:Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an undertreated psychological condition prevalent among service members and veterans. Members of the military community often raise mental health concerns in primary care settings. However, many primary care physicians (PCPs) lack training in PTSD within the military community and may be underprepared to discuss PTSD or trauma with patients.OBJECTIVES:We assessed PCPs' knowledge of evidence-based PTSD screening and treatment practices, confidence in their abilities to provide clinical care around PTSD, and frequency of asking new patients about their military history. We also examined PCP characteristics related to these measures.RESEARCH DESIGN:We surveyed a national sample of 7426 PCPs to assess their PTSD knowledge, confidence, and military history screening practices. Data were analyzed using weighted multivariable regressions.RESULTS:Forty-three percent of PCPs reported they very often or always screened for military history and, on average, PCPs answered 41% of the PTSD knowledge items correctly. PCPs who rated their PTSD knowledge higher were more confident and more frequently screened for military history, but did not have higher knowledge scores compared with PCPs with lower self-assessed knowledge. Several PCP characteristics, such as sex, years of practice, and practice setting, predicted PTSD measures.CONCLUSIONS:PCPs have gaps in their knowledge and screening practices related to PTSD. The absence of a meaningful correlation of knowledge scores with PCP self-assessed knowledge or confidence suggests PCPs may not accurately rate their own knowledge. Targeted, evidence-based training on effective practices may promote PTSD clinical knowledge.

Maintaining a healthy marriage may be challenging for military couples as they attempt to balance the demands of work and family; for dual-military couples, this can be even more challenging. Using data from the Millennium Cohort Family Study, we examined whether military stress experiences negatively impact marital quality through the mediation of work–family conflict. Spouse gender and dual-military status were included as moderators. Spouses reported on marital quality, work–family conflict, military stress experiences, and personal military experience. Spouse and service member demographics were also included. Results demonstrated that experiencing more military stress experiences was related to lower marital quality, which was mediated by work–family conflict. Additionally, female dual spouses reported lower marital quality than male dual spouses and civilian spouses. Findings from this study highlight the importance of providing support to military spouses for stressful military events and potentially tailoring support services for female dual spouses to improve marital quality.

Volunteering has often been cited as a potential pathway for economic opportunity for the out of work to increase their job prospects, but little empirical research has been conducted on the topic. Using a nationally representative data set of 70,535 unemployed persons across a 10-year period (2002-2012) from the U.S. Current Population Survey, we found that when out of work in Year 1, those who volunteered had a 27% higher likelihood of being employed in Year 2, compared with those who did not volunteer. The relationship between volunteering and employment was strongest for individuals without a high school diploma and persons living in rural areas, where the increased likelihood of being employed in Year 2 for volunteers was 51% and 55%, respectively. We found that the relationship between volunteering and employment is stable across gender, race and ethnic categories, age, time, metropolitan statistical area (MSA), and unemployment rate.

This study examined whether satisfaction with the Air Force (AF) as way of life increased post-9/11 and whether it has sustained. Using data from 179,309 personnel collected across a period of eight years (2000–2008) in four waves of cross-sectional data collection, we found that satisfaction with the AF as a way of life increased dramatically following 9/11 and since then has declined from the height, but has not returned to pre-9/11 levels. After controlling for time as well as demographics, the best predictors of satisfaction were (1) feeling that the AF is a good environment for bringing up children, (2) a strong a sense of community, and (3) perceived strong unit leader support for members and their families.

This study examined whether satisfaction with the Air Force (AF) as way of life increased post-9/11 and whether it has sustained. Using data from 179,309 personnel collected across a period of eight years (2000-2008) in four waves of cross-sectional data collection, we found that satisfaction with the AF as a way of life increased dramatically following 9/11 and since then has declined from the height, but has not returned to pre-9/11 levels. After controlling for time as well as demographics, the best predictors of satisfaction were (1) feeling that the AF is a good environment for bringing up children, (2) a strong a sense of community, and (3) perceived strong unit leader support for members and their families.

This report represents the work and perspectives of the authors and is the product of professional research. it does not represent the position or opinions of CNCS, the federal government, or the reviewers. The mission of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) is to improve lives, strengthen communities, and foster civic engagement through service and volunteering. CNCS, a federal agency, engages more than five million Americans in service through AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, Social innovation fund, volunteer Generation fund, and other programs, and leads the President's national call to service initiative, united We Serve. Acknowledgments The authors wish to acknowledge the many reviewers within and outside government for their time and thoughtful comments reviewing this study: This report is in the public domain. Authorization to reproduce it in whole or in part is granted. upon request, this material will be made available in alternative formats for people with disabilities.

Public Administration ReviewVolume 73, Issue 2 p. 352-353 ARTICLE Commentary: Creating a Volunteer Infrastructure through Public Funding William Basl, William Basl Corporation for National and Community ServiceSearch for more papers by this authorChristopher Spera, Christopher Spera Corporation for National and Community ServiceSearch for more papers by this author William Basl, William Basl Corporation for National and Community ServiceSearch for more papers by this authorChristopher Spera, Christopher Spera Corporation for National and Community ServiceSearch for more papers by this author First published: 04 February 2013 https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12036 William Basl: was appointed as director of AmeriCorps State and National for the Corporation for National and Community Service, an independent federal agency, in June 2012. In that capacity, he oversees the day-to-day operations of AmeriCorps, the Corporation's largest program, with approximately 70,000 members serving throughout the country. Previously, he served for 18 years as executive director of the Washington Commission for National and Community Service, where he was responsible for implementing innovative state-level service initiatives. E-mail:[email protected] Christopher Spera: is director of research and evaluation for the Corporation for National and Community Service. He develops and oversees the agency's diverse research and evaluation portfolio, which is composed of studies ranging from randomized controlled trials to evaluations of the Corporation's signature programs. He leads a research agenda rooted in a “research-to-practice model” that values science as a tool for informing program and policy decisions. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume73, Issue2March/April 2013Pages 352-353 RelatedInformation

OJJDP created the underage drinking bulletin series to educate practitioners and policymakers about the problems youth face when they abuse alcohol and to provide evidence-based guidelines. The series presents findings from a study on preventing underage drinking in the Air Force and a literature review of the effects and consequences of underage drinking, best practices for community supervision of underage drinkers, legal issues surrounding underage drinking, and practice guidelines for working with underage drinkers.

This brief sidebar reviews efforts to implement prevention programs within the military. As a workplace, members serving in the United States military at all ranks and all ages have a significant level of responsibility, especially during times of heavy deployments. Today's high-risk, lengthy, and frequent deployments can pose significant challenges to military members and their families (Hosek et al. 2006) and can lead to increased rates of problem behaviors, including heavy alcohol use (Ames et al. 2007). The risk for problem drinking increases for service members with more frequent deployments and a greater total cumulative length of time deployed (Spera et al. 2011). Ames and her group confirmed positive relationships between environmental and cultural elements of foreign deployment liberties (e.g., norms, traditions and rituals around heavy drinking and raucous behavior, availability of inexpensive alcohol, youth role-modeling older sailors, low to no supervisory control) and drinking rates and problem behaviors for both young adult (Ames et al. 2009) and careerist members of the U.S. Navy (Ames et al. 2007). Since 1980, smoking and illicit drug use has decreased among military personnel but heavy alcohol use has not (Bray and Hourani 2007). According to the 2008 Department of Defense (DOD) Health-Related Behavior Survey, 20 percent of all service members reported heavy alcohol use (i.e., five or more drinks on the same occasion at least once a week in the past 30 days) (Bray et al. 2009), meaning heavy episodic drinking still is common in the military (Stahre et al. 2009). In a recent survey, military personnel aged 18 to 25 and 26 to 35 years had significantly higher rates of heavy drinking than did civilians in those age groups: 26 percent vs. 16 percent and 18 vs. 11 percent, respectively (Bray et al. 2009). Despite the seriousness of military drinking problems, prevention efforts that have undergone rigorous evaluation are minimal. Strategies to prevent alcohol-related consequences, such as driving-under-the-influence (DUI) checks, are used in the military, but are not rigorously evaluated (Moore and Ames 2009). Spera and colleagues (2010) reported on an intervention using environmental strategies to reduce drinking and alcohol-related problems among 18- to 25- year-old active-duty Air Force (AF) members in five communities with local Air Force bases (AFBs). The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) awarded discretionary grants to five communities in four States as part of the Enforcing Underage Drinking Laws initiative to fund these environmental strategies. The intervention targeted active-duty members living both on and off base. A broad-based coalition (e.g., law enforcement officials, government officials, alcohol and beverage commission representatives, and AF human-service providers) was involved in implementing the intervention across a 3-year period. The five communities were Phoenix, Arizona/Luke AFB; Tucson, Arizona/Davis-Monthan AFB; Honolulu, Hawaii/Hickam AFB; the greater Sacramento area in California/Beale AFB; and Great Falls, Montana/Malmstrom AFB. Intervention activities included the following: * Enforcement aimed at reducing the social availability of alcohol, including at least three operations per year to verify drinkers' identifications and at least two controlled party-dispersal operations per year; * A minimum of two to three compliance checks (using covert underage buyers) per year at alcohol retailers near the base and in areas frequented by underage active-duty members to ensure that the establishments were not selling alcohol to underage active-duty members; * Increased number and frequency of DUI checks in the community, including a minimum of at least two DUI patrol operations per year targeted at youth alcohol parties and subsequent driving in and around their respective areas and communities; * Working to educate State lawmakers about changes to policies and laws that can affect underage drinking (e. …

OBJECTIVE:With today's new military deployment environment, characterized by more frequent and longer deployments, significant attention has focused on the effects of deployment on problem behaviors, including alcohol use. The current study examined the relationship between aspects of deployment and alcohol use.METHOD:The data for the current study were collected as part of the Air Force Community Assessment survey, an anonymous Web-based survey of Air Force members. The survey was administered to a stratified random sample of 56,137 active duty Air Force members across 80 bases worldwide; 78% were male and 22% were female. The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test measured the rate of alcohol problems. Deployment histories were collected using a series of questions that asked respondents about various aspects and characteristics of their recent deployments.RESULTS:Logistic regression was used to examine the impact of various aspects of deployment on problem drinking. After controlling for demographic variables related to the likelihood of problem drinking, both a higher frequency of deployment and a greater total cumulative length of time deployed since September 11, 2001, were associated with a higher likelihood of problem drinking. For each increase in deployment frequency category the odds that an Air Force member was a problem drinker increased by 14%, and for each additional year spent deployed the odds increased by 23%.CONCLUSIONS:These findings indicate a significant relationship between deployment and problem drinking. However, most members who deployed multiple times remained resilient. This points to the need for future research on protective factors that foster resiliency.

In 2006, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) awarded discretionary grants to five communities as part of the Enforcing Underage Drinking Laws (EUDL) initiative to implement an environmental strategy approach to reduce drinking and associated misconducts among Air Force members. The evaluation design was a within-site, pre-test/post-test intervention comparison of baseline data to out-year data. Four of the five communities had significant decreases in one or more of the outcomes of interest from pre-test to post-test. Two communities (Great Falls, MT and Tucson, AZ) had a significant decline in the compliance check failure rate of local establishments that sell alcohol. One community (Great Falls, MT) had a significant decline in arrests for possession of alcohol by a minor. Four communities (Great Falls, MT; Tucson, AZ; Phoenix, AZ; Honolulu, HI) had a significant decline in DUI/DWI arrests. These findings build on results reported in an earlier article which provided evidence to suggest that the EUDL program had an influence on self-reported drinking behaviors in three of the five communities. These two articles, in combination, provide evidence to suggest for the first time that community-level programs using an environmental strategy approach can be successful in targeting military members.

OBJECTIVE In the fall of 2006, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention awarded discretionary grants to five communities in four states as part of the Enforcing Underage Drinking Laws initiative. These 3-year grants were designed to support implementation of a set of interventions using an environmental strategies approach to reduce drinking and associated alcohol-related misconducts among active-duty Air Force members ages 18-25, with a specific focus on the underage population. The current article presents findings from Year 1 of the evaluation. METHOD Data on alcohol use were obtained from a large-scale, anonymous survey that fielded in the spring of 2006 (i.e., pretest) and the spring of 2008 (i.e., posttest) from a stratified random sample of Air Force members at five demonstration and five comparison communities. RESULTS The percentage of junior enlisted personnel at risk for an alcohol problem dropped 6.6% in the Air Force overall during the last 2 years but dropped as much as 13.6% and 9.8% in two Arizona demonstration communities that implemented the intervention. CONCLUSIONS The first-year results suggest that the Enforcing Underage Drinking Laws intervention may have been one factor that helped to reduce the percentage of junior enlisted Air Force members at risk for an alcohol problem in the demonstration communities.

This study examined parental aspirations for their children’s educational attainment in relation to ethnicity (African American, Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic), parental education, children’s academic performance, and parental perceptions of the quality and climate of their children’s school with a sample of 13,577 middle and high school parents. All parents had relatively high educational aspirations for their children, and within each ethnic subgroup, parental education and children’s academic performance were significantly and positively related to parental aspirations. However, moderating effects were found such that Caucasian parents with lower levels of education had significantly lower educational aspirations for their children than did parents of other ethnicities with similar low levels of education. Although the strength of the relationship between parental perceptions of school-related factors and parental aspirations for their children’s educational attainment was not strong, it was most predictive of non-Caucasian parental aspirations for their children.

Using data from 34,381 Air Force active-duty members, the current study examines active-duty members' perceptions of their spouse's or significant other's ability to cope with deployment of unknown length and adjust to demands of being an Air Force family. Active-duty members' perception of their spouse's ability to cope with deployment significantly varied by rank and time married, with 35 percent of junior enlisted and 30 percent of members married less than three years indicating their spouse would have a serious or very serious problem coping with deployment of unknown length. Protective factors—unit relationship quality, leadership effectiveness, and tangible social support from community members—were positively and significantly related to members' reports of spousal ability to adjust to Air Force family demands. The variance explained by these protective factors was highest for active-duty members who had been away from home for deployment or temporary duty for more than six months in the past twelve months.

The community attachment model of addiction is an ecologically based social process model that suggests social context referents (peers, family, neighbors, etc.) will influence attachment to addiction or recovery communities, via cognitive, affective, and behavioral commitments. This study examined the influence of social context referents on intention to change drug using behavior, and examined moderating effects of three contextual indicators (labor market attachment, educational attainment, and family poverty status) on these relationships. The study sample consisted of 302 adults in inpatient and outpatient substance abuse treatment facilities, who completed a set of instruments that included the Ecological Assessment of Substance Abuse Experiences (EASE), a new instrument designed to measure the influence of social context referents on addiction and recovery attachment processes. Results showed that all three contextual indicators moderated relationships among social context referenced attitudes, drug use concern, and intention to change drug using behaviors. Findings suggest that practitioners should attend to both microlevel orientations to social context and macrolevel contextual dimensions (e.g., labor force attachment), as both may influence behavioral change opportunities.

For more than a century, social scientists from a variety of disciplines have proposed theories of socialization to explain how values, goals, skills, and attitudes are passed from socialization agents to children. Empirical research over the last 25 years points to variations in the socialization process across families from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic groups, prompting the call for new theoretical developments that can explain these differences and expand research questions and methodologies in this area. This article presents a new approach to empirically examining socialization processes that seeks to account for these sociocultural differences, called a contextual-congruence model of socialization. The primary tenets of the model and areas to focus future empirical study are discussed.

There is growing consensus across literatures that more than individual motivation and "will to change" influence whether a client will be able to make and sustain recovery-related changes to prevent drug relapse post-treatment. New areas of inquiry in the substance abuse field have proposed conceptual models that promote an integration of both individual and social context factors, which offer the opportunity for important developments in clinical practice. This study examined the influence of social context referents on clients' intention to change substance abusing behaviors. The Ecological Assessment of Substance abuse Experiences (EASE), an instrument that measures the influence of social context referents on addiction and recovery behaviors, was administered to 302 inpatient and outpatient adults in treatment for substance abuse. Results showed that the number of people in his/her social network favorable towards recovery (Beta=.222); the extent to which one personally identifies with being in recovery (Beta=.339); the perceived importance of people in the client's social network encouraging recovery-related behaviors (Beta=.369); weak beliefs that drugs will lead to positive outcomes (Beta=-.220); and strong beliefs that recovery will lead to positive outcomes (Beta=.307) were all associated with intention to change substance abusing behavior.

The current study examines research questions proposed by an expanded version of Darling and Steinberg’s contextual model of parenting. Using a sample of 184 adolescents, the analyses indicated that adolescents’ perceptions of parental educational goals and values were related positively and significantly to their reports of parental school involvement and parental monitoring. In turn, adolescents’ perceptions of parental involvement in schoolwork were related positively and significantly to their interest in school, internal academic self-regulation, and goal pursuit. Parental styles moderated the relationship between parental practices and student grades, with parental involvement and monitoring most effective under child-centered parenting styles. The implications of the study results on the parental socialization of school achievement and motivation are considered.