Y o u a n d t h e R A F
NOT ANOTHER Survey!
T
here is no doubt that some people do enjoy the opportunity to make their views known, oſten adding lengthy comments to their questionnaires. Others however
are less enthusiastic and put their surveys in the To Do pile, where they may or may not reach the top before their ‘return by’ date, whilst those economising on effort miss out this step completely and just consign their surveys straight to the waste bin.
But why are there so many? Sooner or later everyone in the RAF, and many of their family members, will be asked by the RAF or by a MOD department to complete a survey. Some people, particularly those with long associations with the RAF, will have received many surveys. We use surveys so widely because they allow us to collect information from many people in a relatively short time.
Where do all these surveys come from? Some of them are official surveys issued on behalf of RAF policy branches and the MOD Centre. These include the RAF’s Families Survey, Reserves Survey, Leavers Surveys and the Continuous Attitude Survey (CAS). There are also surveys sent by the Centre to members of all three Services, such as the Working Patterns Survey, and the recent surveys on Flexible Working, Sexual Harassment and Internal Communications. The results of all these surveys are examined closely when new policies are written, and when existing policies are being evaluated.
Official surveys also form part of the many projects carried out for the MOD by research groups and university departments. For example, studies to increase understanding of why people choose to stay in or to leave the Armed Forces; studies of what is most important to people at different stages in their Service careers, and the well-publicised long-term research into the health of Gulf War veterans which is being carried out by Professor Simon Wessely of King’s College London.
You can tell an official survey because it will have a clear statement of its purpose, endorsement by a senior person, and an individual’s contact details in case you have a problem or query. When official surveys deal with sensitive issues, and/or where the identity of the person completing them can be traced directly through a code number or barcode, the surveys will have gone through a comprehensive review process under the MOD Research Ethics Committee, whose remit is to safeguard the rights,
38 Spring 2008
Anne Brackley, Senior Occupational Psychologist at HQ AIR Directorate of Personnel and Training Strategy lets us in on a few behind the scene facts…
dignity and welfare of the people taking part in studies, not least their entitlement to anonymity.
It is hard to tell how many unofficial surveys are used to obtain information for more limited and specific use, perhaps just relating to a single unit or working group. In addition it is common for people to opt to conduct surveys amongst their colleagues as projects for educational courses etc.
Why are so many surveys sent out? I work in the RAF’s Directorate of Personnel and Training Strategy at HQ AIR, and I blush to confess that during the last 10 years I have sent out over 75,000 official questionnaires to members of the RAF and their families, with my colleagues in my own and other MOD groups accounting for many tens of thousands more.
A surprising amount of effort goes into running a survey, in planning its content (there are very definitely good and bad ways of phrasing questions), choosing who the lucky recipients will be, arranging printing and distribution and the receipt of completed surveys, carrying out data entry (converting ticks in boxes into database entries), analysing data, and finally interpreting the results and relating them to the issue in hand, such as the evaluation of a policy. There is no way that all this effort would be expended without a strong belief in the value of survey data!
Surveys are designed to explore the views and circumstances of particular groups of people, and in order for a survey’s results to give a reliable indication, it must be completed by a large enough proportion of the group’s members. As an example, if you were running a survey to find out the views of the RAF as a whole, if you wanted to be 95% certain that your results would reflect these views to within plus or minus 5%, you would need at least 400 questionnaires to be completed. If you wanted to be 99% certain that your results would be within plus or minus 2%, you would need 4000!
Unfortunately, over time, the number of people who choose to complete surveys is dropping. For example, when the RAF CAS began in the late 1980s, its ‘response rate’ was 75%. Now we are lucky to get a 50% response rate to our surveys. Undoubtedly part of the problem is ‘survey fatigue’, people receiving so many surveys so we are trying hard to stagger the issue of the official surveys, and to make sure that the same people don’t receive lots of different surveys. However we can’t prevent people from receiving too many unofficial and local surveys.
What use are all these surveys? Another reason why people don’t complete surveys is because they don’t believe that the information from them is used. This is very far from the truth! HQ AIR Community Support acts as the sponsor of the RAF’s Families Survey, in close consultation with the Families Federation, and these two groups regularly consult the results of the survey to find out prevailing opinions.
Indeed, the RAFCOM website
was created largely in response to communication and information needs identified by the Families Survey, which now collects users’ opinions of RAFCOM to make sure that it continues to meet these needs.
Information from the RAF CAS, and other more specific survey research, continues to emphasise the importance of family matters in relation to providing enjoyable long-term careers in the Service. Recently survey findings have fed directly into the formation of the RAF’s Operational Stress Management and Stress Management and Resilience policies, and surveys of applicants are providing much valuable information about what people are looking for in an RAF career, and about their impressions of the recruitment and selection processes.
The RAF CAS provides information to many groups on a wide range of subjects. For example every year the Armed Forces Pay Review Body (AFPRB) requests a large volume of data from this and other surveys. The AFPRB uses the data, combined with information from other sources, to evaluate pay and allowances in relation to the demands made on Service personnel.
The high value placed on RAF CAS and Families Survey information is demonstrated by each year the data from these surveys (and their Army and Naval Service counterparts) being released to the public via the House of Commons Library. The data are regularly consulted by the media, and by those MPs who have a special interest in the welfare of members of the Armed Forces.
Please help! If you are one of those marvellous people who makes a point of completing all the surveys they receive – thank you very much, and please continue to do so! If you don’t usually bother with surveys, or tend not to get round to doing them until it’s too late, please reconsider. Our official RAF and MOD surveys are a sincere attempt to find out what people’s views are and what they want, and the more people who reply, the better quality and more reliable information we will have.
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