"Prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense." "National Defense Research Institute."

Introduction and study overview -- Background : DoD's policy toward military members and their families over time -- DoD commitment to military families has grown significantly since World War I -- Evidence linking support to military personnel and families to outcomes Is limited -- Understanding family needs is a central feature of today's DoD policy -- Limitations in approaches to learning about service member and family needs lead to a new approach -- Resource allocation data analyses are unable to control for influential factors not captured in the datasets -- Quasi-experimental evaluations of programs -- Surveys of service members and spouses have not placed service member and family needs at the center -- Focus groups and face-to-face interview studies : impractical for large-scale data collection -- A framework for a new approach -- Development of the Service Member and Family Needs Survey -- Concept for a new needs-focused survey instrument -- Subject matter experts inform framework and survey content -- Drawing on previous research to inform the survey development -- Deployment-related issues -- Predeployment -- Deployment -- Postdeployment family reunification -- Ensuring that the framework, content, and method fits today's families : focus groups with soldiers, Marines, spouses, and support providers -- Brainstorming approach -- Participant-recommended study methods -- Conclusion -- Developing the Service Member and Family Needs Survey Structure -- Problems in the past year -- Needs linked to greatest problems -- Characteristics of military and nonmilitary resources used and not used to meet the greatest needs -- Ability of resources to meet greatest needs for greatest problems -- Projected impact of loss of resources -- Outcome indicators : Satisfaction and desire to remain in the military -- Conclusion -- Testing, refining, and assessing the relative value of a prototype instrument -- Testing the instrument with soldiers, Marines, and spouses -- What we learned -- The average length of time to complete the survey was within our goals -- The problems and needs lists needed additional development -- The most common routes to the survey varied -- All eligible respondents chose to complete the survey online, rather than to call In -- Most participants reported no or few competing requests for research participation -- Participants likely differ demographically from the population, but DoD demographic data on spouses are limited -- Revising the instrument -- Assessing the contribution of the sample survey instrument -- Survey paradigm -- Comparing surveys by determining how well they describe a hypothetical family -- Conclusion -- Implementation challenges -- Challenges to obtaining adequate survey participation -- Access -- Reaching spouses -- Sampling challenges -- Dissemination challenges and the Air Force Climate Survey Model -- Seven potential contributions of the new methodology -- Information for leaders and decisionmakers -- Unit commanders -- Service providers -- Base commanders -- Military departments and DoD -- Other applications of the framework -- Conclusion -- APPENDIXES -- A. Sample Survey of Service Member and Family Needs -- B. Focus group protocols.