Leidos, Inc., 4161 Campus Point Court, San Diego, CA 92121, USA.
Psychological Health and Readiness Department, Naval Health Research Center, San Diego, CA 92106, USA.
Mil Med. 2024 Aug 19;189(Suppl 3):298-305. doi: 10.1093/milmed/usae098.
Sexual assault in the U.S. Military is a serious concern. Recruiting representative samples of service members to participate in sexual assault research is essential for understanding the scope of the problem and generating data that can inform prevention and intervention efforts. Accordingly, the current study aims to examine response and completion rates of an anonymous survey of sexual assault and alcohol use among active duty sailors aged 18 to 24 with the overarching goal of achieving a representative sample and informing future recruitment efforts.
This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the Naval Health Research Center. The study involved an anonymous survey of sexual assault and alcohol use among 612 active duty sailors aged 18 to 24. Since 79.6% of Navy service members are men and 20.4% are women, women were oversampled to achieve sufficient representation. Survey invitations were emailed to 12,031 active duty sailors: 64.3% (n = 7,738) men and 35.7% (n = 4,293) women.
Response rates were disproportionate, with 3.0% (n = 234) of male and 8.8% (n = 377) of female sailors responding to the study invitation. Survey completion rates, however, were similar between male and female sailors (81.2% and 80.1% for male and female personnel, respectively).
Results demonstrated that female sailors were significantly more likely than male sailors to participate in a study of sexual assault and alcohol use. However, once enrolled in the study, male and female sailors completed the 234-item questionnaire at a similar rate. Study findings highlight the challenges of engaging male service members in sexual assault-related research. Despite the disproportionately high representation of men in the military, sexual assault researchers may need to sample according to the overall distribution of gender in the military or perhaps even oversample men to achieve a representative sample.
美国军队中的性侵犯是一个严重的问题。招募有代表性的服务成员样本参与性侵犯研究对于了解问题的范围和生成可以为预防和干预工作提供信息的数据至关重要。因此，本研究旨在检查对一项针对 18 至 24 岁现役水手的性侵犯和酒精使用匿名调查的反应和完成率，其首要目标是获得代表性样本并为未来的招募工作提供信息。
本研究已获得海军健康研究中心机构审查委员会的批准。该研究涉及对 612 名 18 至 24 岁现役水手的性侵犯和酒精使用进行匿名调查。由于 79.6%的海军现役人员为男性，20.4%为女性，因此对女性进行了超额抽样以确保充分代表性。向 12031 名现役水手发送了调查邀请电子邮件：男性占 64.3%（n=7738），女性占 35.7%（n=4293）。
反应率不成比例，男性水手的反应率为 3.0%（n=234），女性水手的反应率为 8.8%（n=377）。然而，男性和女性水手的调查完成率相似（男性和女性人员分别为 81.2%和 80.1%）。
结果表明，女性水手参与性侵犯和酒精使用研究的可能性明显高于男性水手。然而，一旦被纳入研究，男性和女性水手完成 234 项问卷的比例相似。研究结果突出了男性服务成员参与性侵犯相关研究的挑战。尽管男性在军队中所占比例不成比例地高，但性侵犯研究人员可能需要根据军队中性别总体分布进行抽样，或者甚至可能需要对男性进行超额抽样以获得代表性样本。
