ABOUT OPERATION MILITARY EXPERIENCE
Operation Military Experience (Operation ME) is a nationwide study to learn about adolescents who, as a young child, had a parent deploy after 9/11. We are speaking with a nationally representative sample of families with two adolescents who had this experience. As always, participation is completely voluntary.
A team of trusted researchers led by the Military Family Research Institute (MFRI)
at Purdue University is conducting this research. We have received funding from both the National Institute of Health and the Department of Defense for this study. In addition, several advocacy and support groups support Operation ME.
Our Mission
The mission of Operation ME is to learn from the unique perspectives of military families and adolescents who experienced these deployments. Operational Tempo (OpTempo) — defined as the speed and intensity of actions in relation to unfolding events — increased rapidly after 9/11. As a result, many military families with young children experienced extended deployments. We designed this project to learn how those adolescents are doing and to use that information to improve the lives of military families.
Why Operation ME Was Created
The post-9/11 era of military service has created unique demands for military families that expose them to a wide variety of stressors. More often than in earlier conflicts, the deployed individual could be either a mother or father. Children in military families experience a parent’s deployment in different ways, and their response depends on a variety of factors. During adolescence, young people make decisions about potentially risky actions that can affect how they function as adults. We want to understand how early exposure to deployment stressors as children may influence the choices they make as adolescents.