Effect of Transition Preparedness on Military Families in the Context of the Military to Civilian Transition

Background & Purpose: Researchers have suggested the military to civilian transition as a key point of intervention to prevent such issues in the veteran community as homelessness, severe mental and physical impairments as well as unemployment. While the literature is expanding in the area of military to civilian transition, the existing literature is limited in how the family is impacted by the transition as well as how they can facilitate or hinder the transition for the service member. Current research documents the relationship between family functioning and negative health outcomes in the military population demonstrating the dynamic interaction between the health of each individual member and the family as a whole. This study will utilize and test a pathway of Military Transition Theory (MTT) to explore the relationship between transition preparedness and family functioning. Examining and testing some of the pathways of MTT will provide a deeper understanding of the dynamic military to civilian transition process and ultimately guide preventative interventions. 

Methods: Analyses used combined datasets from a wellbeing study of U.S. Veterans from the San Francisco and Chicago areas (N=1405). Two measures from the questionnaire were analyzed in addition to demographic questions: (1) A new measure assessing Military Transition Preparedness (2) McMaster Family Assessment Device (FAD) general functioning subscale. In line with how the scale has been previously analyzed, only positively worded questions were used from the FAD where a high score indicates higher functioning. First descriptive statistics were explored then a linear regression was used to understand the relationship between transition preparedness and family functioning controlling for age, gender, race, marital status, education level, branch of service and rank.

Results: Linear regression results show that transition preparedness is a significant predictor of perceptions of family functioning among veterans (β=.326 t=7.72, p=<.001). Meaning that for every one-unit increase in transition preparedness family functioning increases .326 even when controlling for age, gender, race, marital status, education level, branch of service and rank. Marital status (specifically married, widowed, or domestic partnership) and gender (specifically transgender) were significantly related to family functioning at the p<.01 level and service branch (specifically Army and Marines) were also significant at the p<.05 level. Our model explains about 14% of the variance in our outcome variable (R² =.1429).

Conclusions & Implications: These findings support prior literature in documenting how what happens to one individual family member can affect the family unit as a whole, in this case lack of preparedness. Findings from this study are also in line with other literature that documents how all transitions have the potential to disrupt the family equilibrium which can effect overall functioning. Both prior literature and our findings emphasize the importance of further understanding how families are effected by the military to civilian transition. By understanding how they are effected, more research and clinical practice can be done on how to include military families throughout the military to civilian transition.