A Look Inside Our Research Process

At Operation Military Experience (Operation ME), we understand how the experiences of military families can impact the individual lives of family members. We are committed to supporting you and other military families in the future.

As researchers in the military-family space, we know that military family members appreciate the opportunity to speak with us about their experiences. Your family’s participation in this study will contribute to a growing knowledge base on the long-term impact of deployment on military families, which could help improve services and policies for families who serve.

How are we selecting families

We have worked with the Defense Manpower Data Center to identify families with adolescent sibling pairs who experienced deployment as young children. From that list, we are randomly selecting families with two children between the ages of 11 and 16 years old who experienced the deployment of a parent when the children were very young.

We are also accepting volunteer families who meet the criteria.

What we’d like your family to do

• Complete online surveys: Share your thoughts with us twice, about a year apart.
• Chat with us on the phone: We’ll have a friendly conversation twice, just to delve deeper.
• Provide access to certain records: Instead of asking your family to rehash past details, we might use existing deployment and service information (with your permission, of course).

As always, participation is optional. You can change your mind and withdraw from the study at any time

How will we compensate your family

For the first wave of data collection, each family member will receive:

• $15 for completing the first survey
• $20 for finishing the first interview
• $20 for the follow-up survey a year later
• $30 for the follow-up interview a year later

How will we use our study findings

We will distribute findings from this study throughout civilian and military communities using presentations, reports and journal articles.

Additionally, we expect to use findings to enhance our own outreach efforts at MFRI, and we expect similar organizations and service providers to do the same.

For example, the Nathanson Family Resilience Center, one of our study partners, operates Project FOCUS, one of the largest resiliency programs in the military assisting over 100,000 service members annually. The center has a long history of using findings from new research to enhance the effectiveness of their programming.