The Quality of Personnel in the Enlisted Ranks

As the armed services transform to develop capabilities to meet a spectrum of uncertain threats, a constant objective will be to ensure the military's compensation and personnel systems are structured to attract, retain, and promote high-quality personnel. The research presented in this monograph provides evidence on the military's ability to meet these goals in the past using two traditional and one nontraditional metric of personnel quality, specifically we use longitudinal data provided by the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) through FY96 on enlistees who entered the military between FY78 and FY92 to address the following questions by service, occupational area, and cohort entry date: * Are high-quality personnel more likely than low-quality personnel to enter the military and to complete their first terms? Are personnel who attrite of lower quality? * Are high-quality personnel more likely to reenlist than are low-quality personnel? * Are high-quality personnel more likely to stay beyond their first term, e.g., to their early and midcareer, than are low-quality personnel? * Are high-quality personnel more likely than low-quality personnel to be promoted? The original document contains color images. ISBN-0-8330-3837