Date of Award

5-2007

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Departmental Honors

Department

Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology

Abstract

In much of the research conducted on military issues, problems are identified years, sometimes decades, before the military publicly acknowledges these concerns; an example of this is sexual assault, which scholars discussed for over thirty years before the military acknowledged the issue. In this paper, I study the value differences between the military leadership and the scholars who study military topics and how these different values may hinder effective communication between the two groups. The method I use in identifying the standards by which the two groups identify problems is content analysis on articles published by the two communities, calculating the percentage of time spent addressing different aspects of concerns regarding the military, including the effects of military culture on the rest of American society, the well-being of individual service members and mission accomplishment, or any combination of these categories. I find the military and the academic community have different priorities in assessing problems and, therefore, their appreciation of these problems is at odds with each other. I conclude with the proposition that scholars would improve the chances their research would reach the audiences able to instigate the changes if the scholars placed more emphasis on those things the military values, namely mission accomplishment and unit integrity.

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Faculty Mentor

Christy Glass

Departmental Honors Advisor

Terry Peak