Exploratory Research on African-American Youth's Propensity to Join the Military

In this preliminary and mainly qualitative research effort we sought information about factors potentially affecting African-American youth's interest in joining one of the military services after high school. Each of 100 African-American high school juniors and seniors was individually interviewed by a male or female African-American adult whom the students were said to know and like. The interviews were conducted at a large city high school that was mostly Black. While the results of this effort are interesting in their own right, their primary values were to suggest variables to examine in a projected effort to model African-American enlistment propensity.