The objective of this research is to explore the influence of military service on political behaviors and attitudes. Existing studies of the military have long recognized the existence of a predominantly conservative political ideology with a resulting propensity for strong Republican Party support within the military community, but have failed to explain the likely causal mechanism for this. Drawing on multiple sources of data from the 2008 Presidential election cycle, I utilized a descriptive analysis of campaign contribution data and bivariate and multivariate analyses of data from the 2008 Military Times Survey and the 2008 American National Election Survey. Much of the data also permitted me to analyze the effect of an individual's service branch on their attitudes as well. I examined the behavior and attitudes of the military across several dimensions, including candidate support and positions on policies of particular relevance to the military, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This analysis found that people who serve in the military tend to be conservative but in many ways their political attitudes are reflective of those of the general population. An individual's race, ethnicity and gender appear to have more influence than military factors, with the exception of service in the Marine Corps, on ideology, partisan identification and policy preferences.

This study explored factors that lead to adaptation among married women in the military during the stressor of deployment. The Double ABCX Model of Family Stress and Adaptation (McCubbin & Patterson, 1 983a, 1 983b, 1 983c) provided a strong theoretical model for this study, on which the empirical model for this study was based. In this study's empirical model, the variables that led to adaptation include the stressor event of military deployment, pile-up of demands (marital pile-up, family pile-up, financial pile-up, and job pile-up), resources (personal resources, family system resources, and social support resources), and perception (perception of deployment and perception of all). The 1999-2000 United States Air Force Community Needs Assessment was analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling and Multiple Hierarchical Regression. The Structural Equation Modeling Analysis did not yield a path model and a Multiple Hierarchical Regression was executed in order to determine which variables in the path model contribute to adaptation. In this analysis, the independent variables were entered according to the theoretical consideration of the Double ABCX Model of Family Stress and Adaptation (McCubbin & Patterson, 1983a, 1983b, 1983c) and the proposed path model. The results Multiple Hierarchical Regression indicate that pileup of demands and resources provided a significant contribution to adaptation. However, deployment and perception did not contribute to the variance in adaptation, which was incongruent to previous findings. The most significant limitation of the study is the disadvantages of conducting a secondary analysis since measures available are less than ideal for the variables in the model. There were several benefits of the study, including the inclusion of women in the military, improvement of the Double ABCX Model of Family Stress and Adaptation (McCubbin & Patterson, 1983a, 1983b, 1983c), and potential early evaluation and intervention of families during periods of stress. Future research is indicated, focusing on extended deployments, qualitative studies exploring the role of perception in adaptation, other understudied population in the military (civilian husbands, men in the military, and dual military couples), and additional model improvement. / Graduation date: 2004

Sexual trauma within the military is a widespread issue, and rape myth acceptance has been shown to contribute to its prevalence. Given that the military culture has been shown to lend itself to hypermasculinity and traditional gender role adherence, both of which facilitate aggression toward women, this effect warrants investigation within a military sample. The present study replicated and expanded upon Aosved and Long's (2006) study examining 85 veteran and active duty military members' responses on the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale, Attitudes Toward Women Scale (short form), Neosexism Scale, Male Role Norms Inventory (short form), Modern and Old Fashioned Racism Scale, Modern Homophobia Scale, a modified version of the Economic Belief Scale, Fraboni Scale of Ageism, Religious Intolerance Scale, and the Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Scale (short form). Findings provide support for the co-occurrence of rape myth acceptance with intolerant attitudes, including sexism, hypermasculine gender role ideology, racism, sexual prejudice, classism, ageism, and religious intolerance, both individually and collectively. These results provide insight into the functioning of intolerant attitudes within a military sample, and provide important insight for future research addressing the association between rape myth acceptance and rape proclivity and the perpetration of military sexual assault.