The utility of the psycholexical approach for identifying military core values: Illustrated in a sample of Swiss career officers and NCOs

ABSTRACT

Values have always been a top priority in the military domains of leadership, training, ethical commitment, and psychological research. However, only a few studies have assessed value descriptors and their underlying dimensional structure in military organizations using an empirical psycholexical and factor analytical approach. This research project examined the structure of military values and derived core military values. Two studies were conducted in cooperation with the Swiss Armed Forces. In study 1, 25 military-specific value descriptors were identified based on a psycholexical analysis of military guidelines and in line with expert ratings by executive military leaders. In study 2, a questionnaire was filled out by a sample of 550 military professionals to capture their ratings of values as applied to everyday military decisions and actions. Principal component analysis in combination with Goldberg’s top-down approach delivered five military value categories that reflect the military culture in Switzerland, characterized as (I) freedom, (II) social cohesion, (III) good soldiership, (IV) mutual respect, and (V) military conformity. Results are discussed in light of introducing a novel research approach to assessing the value structure and culture in military organizations.

KEYWORDS:

• Military values
• psycholexical approach
• dimensional structure
• military culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [N.E.], upon reasonable request.

Notes

1. In Switzerland, career officers and career NCOs are full-time military employees; they are responsible for conveying military values to soldiers, who are required to complete basic military service and additional training according to the conscript army system.

2. Data analysis was conducted with and without excluded data cases; only minor differences in results were observed.

3. We tested skipping these items for exploration of factor structure, with the outcome that no substantial differences in factorial structure occurred. Accordingly, items were not excluded for results reported.