Military Enlistment, Reenlistment and Withdrawal Research: A Critical Review of the Literature

Abstract

A critical review of the military literature indicates that incentives, organization practices, organization climate, job content, satisfaction, intention, expectations, demographic, psychological, aptitude, and performance variables, in isolation, explain a small percent of the variance in the dependent variable. In addition, the literature review notes that meaningful predictors (such as the size of the military accession age population, current and/or projected reemployment among this population, the rates of military wages to civilian wages, and DOD separation policies) have been omitted in much of the past research. The basic conclusion of the study is the need for the inclusion of additional predictors in multivariate studies which have strong research designs.