Operational stressors, psychological distress, and turnover intentions: The impact of potentially morally injurious experiences

ABSTRACT

Military personnel experience stressors during deployment that could take a toll on their psychological well-being and on the organization’s function. One common approach to better understanding the impact of such stressors is measuring events using psychological scales. The current research examined items measuring potentially morally injurious experiences in post-deployment assessments of personnel involved in the Afghanistan mission using the United States Mental Health Advisory Team – Combat Experiences Scale (MHAT-CES).

Study 1 found that the scale produced five components. Three components showed consistency with past studies that examined the structure of other versions of the CES (i.e., dangerous environments, exposure to dead and injured and active combat). A fourth component that we labeled life threats included items that were typically divided between the aforementioned components. Finally, a stable and reliable fifth component included items related to potentially morally injurious experiences. Study 2 replicated this structure and showed that increased perceptions of potentially morally injurious experiences during deployment were associated with higher levels of psychological distress, which in turn promoted stronger turnover intentions, even after controlling for the effects of the other combat stressor components on these variables. We discuss the implications of potentially morally injurious experiences in relation to individual psychological distress and organizational retention.

KEYWORDS:

• Military
• moral injury
• deployment
• combat stressors
• psychological distress
• turnover intentions

Disclosure statement

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

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Department of National Defence.

Notes

1. Of the original 44 items, 5 were excluded from the analyses. Three were removed because of concerns that endorsing these items might indicate potential misconduct (see also Sudom et al., 2016 for a similar rationale). These items were “observing violations of the Law of Armed Conflict/Geneva Conventions”, “witnessing the unauthorized modification of ROE in order to accomplish the mission”, and “witnessing ROE being ignored in order to accomplish the mission”. Two items were removed from the analyses because they were not thematically related to the other items in the scale (i.e., “having to work under tight deadlines” and “being expected to do more work than is reasonable”).

2. The following items did not load on any factors: “Being in threatening situation where you were unable to respond because of the rules of engagement”, “Seeing destroyed homes or villages”, “Close call: dud landed near you”, and “Receiving artillery, rocket, or mortar fire”.

3. Three items cross-loaded on the combat experiences and the dangerous environments components. These were “being attacked or ambushed”, “receiving small arms of fire”, and “disarming civilians”. Being attacked was retained in active combat and receiving small arms fire and disarming civilians were retained in dangerous environments.

4. Reduced from 44-items based on the findings of Study 1.

5. The remainder (5%) of the sample were single with dependents.

6. Only the 35 items identified in Study 1 were used in all analyses for Study 2.

7. Gender, age and education were not measured in the study so their potential impact could not be examined.

8. Litz et al. (2009) also refer to perpetrating actions that violate core beliefs. Shay (2014) includes betrayal by authority as a PMIE.

9. Factor loadings less than .35 suppressed in this table. The following five items from the 44-item scale were removed before commencing analysis: “observing violations of the Law of Armed Conflict/Geneva Conventions”, “witnessing the unauthorized modification of ROE in order to accomplish the mission”, and “witnessing ROE being ignored in order to accomplish the mission”, “having to work under tight deadlines” and “being expected to do more work than is reasonable”. The following items did not load on any factors: “Being in threatening situation where you were unable to respond because of the rules of engagement”, “Seeing destroyed homes or villages”, “Receiving artillery, rocket, or mortar fire”, and “Close call: dud landed near you”.