全球智库信息集成服务系统

Marital Relationships

• Across the entire deployment cycle, couples, on average, became significantly less satisfied with their marriages and engaged in less psychological and physical aggression than they reported prior to the deployment. These changes across the deployment cycle do not differ significantly from the changes experienced during the same period by similar couples that did not deploy.

Family Relationships

• Service members reported better family environments during deployments than before or after deployments, possibly because they are removed from the day-to-day challenges associated with family life. Spouses, in contrast, reported no significant changes in family environment across the deployment cycle.
• Service members who reported engaging in more predeployment preparation activities reported higher satisfaction with parenting postdeployment. Similarly, spouses who reported more preparation activities and greater satisfaction with the frequency of communication with the service member during deployment reported higher parenting satisfaction postdeployment.

Psychological and Behavioral Health

• We found no overall significant effect of deployment on persistent psychological or behavioral health outcomes for service members or spouses. This is consistent with the fact that we studied a relatively experienced population, serving during a period of the conflict with comparatively low levels of reported deployment trauma.
• However, deployed service members who experienced deployment trauma did show a persistent increase in their depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and anxiety symptoms relative to their pre-deployment levels. When the service member experienced physical trauma (i.e., injury) during the study deployment, their spouses also showed persistent increases in those symptoms.

Child and Teen Well-Being

• In our analyses, most outcomes did not change over the course of a deployment cycle. Those that did change might reflect maturational changes among children and teens rather than changes related to deployment.
• Three child outcomes (reported by spouses) showed significant changes over the deployment cycle: Total difficulties (and more specifically, emotional problems), as well as depression screener scores. Spouses reported elevated symptoms in their children during deployment.

Military Integration

• Communication with other military families during deployment was associated with higher service member retention intentions and greater spouse and teen military commitment postdeployment.
• Experiences of nondeployed families may also be stressful, which may minimize the gap between deployed and nondeployed families. For example, among nondeployed families, relocation was related to decreased military satisfaction, commitment, and retention intentions among service members.

In 2009, RAND launched the Deployment Life Study, a longitudinal study of military families across a deployment cycle in order to assess family readiness. Family readiness refers to the state of being prepared to effectively navigate the challenges of daily living experienced in the unique context of military service. The study surveyed families at frequent intervals throughout a complete deployment cycle — before a service member deploys (sometimes months before), during the actual deployment, and after the service member returns (possibly a year or more after she or he redeployed). It assessed a number of outcomes over time, including:

This culminating report briefly reviews the study design and data collection procedures, presents results from analyses of the longitudinal data collected from some 2,700 military families, and offers recommendations for programs and future research related to military families. The research was jointly sponsored by the Office of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army, and by the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

  Benjamin R. Karney, Sarah O. Meadows, and Terri Tanielian

• Chapter Two

  Data and Methods

  Beth Ann Griffin, Terry L. Schell, Esther M. Friedman, Sarah O. Meadows, and Robin L. Beckman

• Chapter Three

  Marital Outcomes

  Benjamin R. Karney, Thomas E. Trail, Beth Ann Griffin, Esther Friedman, and Robin L. Beckman

• Chapter Four

  Family Outcomes

  Sarah O. Meadows, Esther M. Friedman, Beth Ann Griffin, Wendy M. Troxel, and Robin L. Beckman

• Chapter Five

  Psychological and Behavioral Health of Service Members and Their Spouses

  Rajeev Ramchand, Terry L. Schell, Terri Tanielian, Beth Ann Griffin, Esther M. Friedman, Robin Beckman, and Christine Vaughan

• Chapter Six

  Child and Teen Outcomes

  Lisa H. Jaycox, Thomas E. Trail, Lynsay Ayer, Beth Ann Griffin, Esther M. Friedman, and Robin L. Beckman

• Chapter Seven

  Military Integration

  Natalie D. Hengstebeck, Sarah O. Meadows, Beth Ann Griffin, Esther M. Friedman, and Robin Beckman

• Chapter Eight

  Discussion, Policy Implications, and Conclusion

  Sarah O. Meadows, Benjamin R. Karney, Terri Tanielian, and Terry L. Schell

• Appendix

  Additional Tables