Research Summaries

Back Retention of High Quality Officers: A Quantitative and Quality Approach to Assess Importance of STEM Degrees and Other Factors

Fiscal Year 2015
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department Naval Research Program
Investigator(s) Tick, Simona L.
Sponsor NPS Naval Research Program (Navy)
Summary The U.S. Navy strives to manage talent by recruiting, developing and retaining a high quality, diverse force that meets the requirements of current and forecasted billets and weapons systems. Recent efforts in officer recruitment have focused on increasing the number of newly commissioned officers with technical degrees. These are often referred to as STEM majors and include BS degrees in physical sciences, computer sciences, engineering, and mathematics. As weapon systems become more technically sophisticated and ship design more capital (and Jess labor-) intensive, the demand for technical expertise continues to grow. On the other hand, the perception is that the Navy faces a higher retention risk from STEM officers. This is due in part to the lucrative civilian employment opportunities available in the labor market, particularly as the economy remains strong.
To better understand the factors that determine performance of a diverse Navy officer corps-including the motivators of both those high quality officers who decide to stay in the Navy and their counterparts who decide to leave the service-this proposed study will combination of quantitative and qualitative methods.
The quantitative analysis portion of the study examines the entire population of Navy officers commissioned over a few years period to carefully model and analyze the factors that are most likely to explain the observed outcomes in retention of high quality officers. However, some of the factors that are likely associated with retention decisions of high quality officers are not measured and thus not observed in the data set. The qualitative portion of this study will provide an excellent complement by using methods that aim to identify and analyze factors associated with officers' decisions not captured with the quantitative methods, yet important in informing policy changes and targeted interventions.
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