Troop turnover linked to stress

Press, 23 September 1988, Page 42

Troop turnover linked to stress

An American professor is surveying all 5700 New Zealand military spouses as part of a project aimed at reducing stress in military families. Dr Jo Hunter hopes to use the results to put forward a set of recommendations for the Ministry of Defence to reduce turnover among soldiers. Dr Hunter, a research professor at the United States International University, said New Zealand was having problems retaining highly trained members of the Armed Forces, a difficulty which mirrored the high turnover in the years immediately after the United States switched to an allvolunteer military. The United States military found soldiers’ enjoyment of their family life

was only second to job satisfaction in determining whether they would re-enlist, said Dr Hunter, a psychologist who studied family stress in the American Armed Forces at that time. She said her studies had found one of the main sources of stress in military families was the lack of information families received about soldiers. “The way it appears to me, the family is never given any information — about when the spouse is going to be posted somewhere else, about when the spouse is going to be back from an exercise,” Dr Hunter said. As more and more women began to work, the Armed Forces would also have to consider spouses’ careers when it posted

servicemen, she said. Many military spouses either could not leave their jobs for economic reasons or did not want to leave them because the move would interfere with their own careers, she said.

“This is a new issue. The military did not have to think about it a few years ago,” Dr Hunter said.

She is following up her survey with 200 personal interviews with military spouses and de facto partners.

The study, to be completed in the spring, is funded by the Ministry of Defence and a Fulbright fellowship frorti' the United States Institute of International Education.