Book/Printed Material Comparing the Army's suicide rate to the general U.S. population : identifying suitable characteristics, data sources, and analytic approaches

Title

• Comparing the Army's suicide rate to the general U.S. population : identifying suitable characteristics, data sources, and analytic approaches

Summary

• Over the past 15 years, the suicide rate among members of the U.S. armed forces has doubled, with the greatest increase observed among soldiers in the Army. This increasing rate is paralleled by a smaller increase in the general U.S. population, observed across both genders, in virtually every age group and in nearly every state. An empirical question exists: What is the extent or degree to which the suicide trend in the Army is unique to that service, relative to what is observed in the general U.S. population? The Army has typically attempted to address this question by standardizing the general population to look like the Army on demographic characteristics. However, given the rise in suicide rates over the past decade, the Army wanted to better understand whether standardization based solely on age and gender is enough. Expanding the characteristics on which the general population is standardized to match the Army could be useful to gain a better understanding of the suicide trends in the Army. However, such a change also brings with it some challenges, including the lack of readily available data in the general U.S. population. In addition, even an expanded set of characteristics still results in having a large number of unmeasured factors that cannot be included in this type of analysis. In this report, the authors explore how accounting for age, gender, race/ethnicity, time, marital status, and educational attainment affects suicide rate differences between soldiers and a comparable subset of the general U.S. population.

Names

• Griffin, Beth Ann, author
• Grimm, Geoffrey, author
• Smart, Rosanna, author
• Ramchand, Rajeev, author
• Jaycox, Lisa, author
• Ayer, Lynsay, author
• Leidy, Erin N., author
• Davenport, Steven, author
• Schell, Terry L., 1967- author
• Morral, Andrew R., author
• Arroyo Center
• Rand Corporation
• United States. Army

Created / Published

• Santa Monica, California : RAND Corporation, [2020]

Contents

• Introduction -- Suicide Risk and Protective Factors -- Army Risk Factors -- General Population Risk Factors -- Matching the Army to a Comparable Subset of General U.S. Population -- Conclusions -- Appendix A: Industry and Occupation Coding in the NVDRS -- Appendix B: Suicide Modeling Methods -- Appendix C: Candidate Data Sources on General Population Suicides -- Appendix D: Data Harmonization -- Appendix E: Analyses for Location and Deployment History -- Appendix F: 2015 Army Analysis.

Headings

• -  United States.--Army
• -  Suicide--United States
• -  Soldiers--Suicidal behavior--United States

Notes

• -  "RAND Arroyo Center."
• -  "Prepared for the United States Army."
• -  "This research was conducted within RAND Arroyo Center's Personnel, Training, and Health Program"--Preface (page iii).
• -  Also available on the Internet as a PDF file.
• -  Includes bibliographical references (pages 95-106).
• -  Description based on print version record; resource not viewed.

Medium

• 1 online resource (xix, 106 pages) : illustrations.

Call Number/Physical Location

• HV6545.7

Digital Id

• https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gdc/gdcebookspublic.2024739166

Library of Congress Control Number

• 2024739166

Rights Advisory

• This is non-restricted, fully open content that may be accessed on and off of the Library of Congress campus, with no restrictions, by an unlimited number of users

Access Advisory

• Unrestricted online access

Online Format

• image
• pdf

LCCN Permalink

• https://lccn.loc.gov/2024739166

Additional Metadata Formats

• MARCXML Record
• MODS Record
• Dublin Core Record