This is our second installment in a two-part series on increasing our military literacy. Last week’s Newsbrief talked about how the military is organized, and this week we will touch upon key concepts underlying why it may be difficult for our military community members to transition to civilian employment. Approximately 200,000 service members leaving the U.S. military annually. Although less than 1% of our U.S. population is currently serving in uniform, approximately 8% of our U.S. population has served and are considered veterans. Additionally, there are an estimated 690,000 military spouses in the U.S. The military community may not be in the majority, but they have served an outsize role to ensure those that have not served can enjoy a life of freedom.

There are numerous ways to serve in the military based upon the type of service component, role, job/occupation, and types of experiences to which someone is exposed. It is critical to recognize that service comes in many forms – uniformed military, military family members, civilian government employees, and contractors all serve the Department of Defense’s military mission in unique and impactful ways. Serving in the military is a total family experience. When a service member serves, so does his or her spouse and children, as the family members must maintain continuity through regular deployments, moves around the world, and conditions that often prevent ever feeling settled into a career for a military spouses or education for military children. 

Happy Veterans Day to SIOP’s military community and beyond. The sacrifices our military men and women and their families make daily are commendable. These sacrifices often go unspoken because it is a way of life for them. Many times when someone stops a veteran to say “thank you for your service” you’ll find the veterans pauses and has to think about a reply. It isn’t that they are not thankful for your gratitude and acknowledgment; it is often that veterans simply do not see their daily actions as anything different from those not wearing a uniform around them. The first few times I (Kristin) was welcomed with such a comment in public after I joined the Army, I fell mute because, in reality, I was simply doing my job as an I-O psychologist in uniform. I, like so many veterans and family members of veterans think of this as a job to be done but to those they protect and enable freedom for, it is far more than that. It is a sacrifice few – about 8% of the U.S. population are veterans – are willing to make for an outsize impact on the world.

SIOP’s Military and Veterans Initiative (MVI) Task Force was launched in fall 2018 after maturing from a prosocial effort first founded in 2012. Focused internally, the Task Force builds a community for those that work on military-relevant or funded topics whether through research, practice, and/or identification as a military community member. Externally, the Task Force communicates best practices of I-O psychology relevant to Veterans’ and their families’ well-being, work conditions, and employment topics.

The Office of Evaluation Sciences (OES) is currently accepting applications for fellowships beginning in Fall 2020 in Washington, DC. The application deadline is December 15, 2019

Based at the General Services Administration (GSA), OES is a team of interdisciplinary experts that works across government to help agencies build and use evidence. Team members work alongside agency collaborators to apply behavioral insights, make concrete recommendations on how to improve government and evaluate impact using administrative data. OES is uniquely situated at the center of government to share leading practices, develop resources, and build skills in the federal workforce on evidence and evaluation.

The book, Adverse Impact Analysis: Understanding Data, Statistics, and Risk, edited by SIOP Fellows Scott Morris and Eric Dunleavy, has been cited as a resource on practical significance in EEO Analysis by the US Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).  The citation is specifically for the chapter written by Fred Oswald, Eric Dunleavy, and Amy Shaw.

As part of its FAQ on the topic, the OFCCP defines practical significance as “whether an observed disparity in employment opportunities or outcomes reflects meaningful harm to the disfavored group,” and acknowledges that practical significance, not just statistical significance, should be considered in compliance reviews. This distinction is important because, as the OFCCP notes, “a virtually unnoticeable disparity in, for instance, selection rates, may nevertheless be statistically significant due to the size of the data set.”