United States Military Cohesion after the Repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

Author

Stephanie E.V. Brown, Seattle Pacific UniversityFollow

Date of Award

Fall 12-2012

Document Type

Honors Project

University Scholars Director

Dr. Jeff Keuss

First Advisor/Committee Member

Dr. Margaret Brown

Second Advisor/Committee Member

Dr. Dana Kendall

Keywords

Don't Ask Don't Tell, social cohesion, task cohesion, military psychology, LGBT, sexual orientation

Abstract

The repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was projected by politicians and military personnel alike to have a negative impact on unit cohesion. The findings of this study indicated that overall military cohesion was high, and that many military members found that the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” had no impact on task or social cohesion. However, using the Chi Square test, there were two noted significant associations when observing participant pay grade and perceptions of how the repeal of DADT has affected a unit’s ability to work together to complete tasks get the job done (χ² (5) = 13.37, p = .020), and when observing participant pay grade and how the repeal of DADT has affected how much service members in the immediate unit care about each other (χ² (5) = 12.92, p = .024). When an impact on cohesion was noted, the repeal had a positive or very positive effect.

Comments

A project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the University Scholars Honors Program.

Recommended Citation

Brown, Stephanie E.V., "United States Military Cohesion after the Repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”" (2012). Honors Projects. 37.
https://digitalcommons.spu.edu/honorsprojects/37

Copyright Status

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Additional Rights Information

Copyright held by author.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.