Development and Validation of the Military Readiness Scale in U.S. Naval Aircrew

Abstract

Introduction: Readiness is a ubiquitous term in DoD doctrine and has been broadly defined as the ability of military forces to meet the demands of assigned missions. There is currently no criterion standard of military readiness and there is also a lack of published readiness measures for the individual military service member, the fundamental building block of force readiness. This report describes the development and validation of the Military Readiness Scale-15 (MRS-15), a self-report instrument, in U.S. Naval Aircrew.

Materials and methods: Scale items were developed by human performance scientists, including a psychometrician. The team developed 19 candidate items, which were administered to Naval Aircrew personnel (N = 164), along with validated measures of theoretically relevant constructs (e.g., pain). Factor structure of the scale was explored with principal components factoring, and Varimax rotation with Kaiser normalization. Removal of 4 items yielded a highly consistent, 15-item scale. From the final scale, we derived a Total Military Readiness score with three readiness subscales that we termed General-Psychological, Technical, and Physical.

Results: We observed robust, age-adjusted relationships in the expected directions, between the Total Military Readiness score and bodily pain, fatigue, occupational stress, mental health symptoms, and sleep disruption.

Conclusions: The MRS-15 is a preliminarily valid and reliable self-report instrument that holds promise for evaluating perceived readiness. To this end, we conceptualized a "readiness dashboard" prototype that is informed by MRS-15 data and can be integrated with a representative selection of other measures to display the readiness status of an individual or an entire unit. Altogether, this research can help to inform policy, training, and resourcing efforts to prepare Naval Aircrew for future engagements.