Analysis of Youth Cohort Enlistment Intention Data

This Note documents a briefing on research investigating the relationship between survey data and respondents' subsequent enlistment decisions, attrition rates, and AFQT scores. The work should help identify possible applications of survey information in recruiting, aggregate enlistment forecasting, and as an outcome measure in policy option tests. AFQT, enlistment, and attrition, and promotion information was linked with demographic and enlistment intention information for Youth Attitude Tracking Study (YATS) survey respondents. The intention information also was aggregated and matched with regional enlistment and economic data. The results indicate that enlistment intention information allows better prediction of YATS respondents' enlistment decisions and helps to predict attrition. They further suggest that AFQT category can be estimated statistically. Finally, preliminary analyses support a significant relationship between regional enlistment rates and concurrent regional enlistment intention levels. Future work should estimate these effects more precisely and investigate the extent of lagged effects.