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Baylor Begins Phase 2 of Military Family Coping Study

Soldiers facing deployment to Afghanistan—or any country in conflict—enter a time of extreme ongoing stress: the strain of preparing to leave home for deployment, the pressure of last-minute preparations, and the anticipation of being deployed to a warzone and leaving family behind. But the soldier isn’t the only person affected. His or her family also is impacted, and the stress level felt by these family members can reduce or increase the anxiety experienced by the soldier.

An interdisciplinary team of Baylor University faculty, hosted and guided by the Baylor School of Social Work, has received a one-year grant of $350,000 to fund Phase II of the Military Family Coping Project, a collaborative research effort to study pre-deployment stress among soldiers and their spouses and parents. The research is supported by the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.

“Soldiers deploy for a limited time at the call from the United States, but some will come home having experienced untold stresses that will remain with them for a lifetime. The more that is known about these stresses, the better we can prepare Soldiers for what they will be facing,” says principal investigator James W. Ellor, PhD, DMin, a professor of social work at Baylor. “With this funding, we are able to continue the research on this significant subject, which will help us to understand the impact of deployment preparation on soldiers and their family members.”

Phase I of the Military Family Coping Project used focus groups of Soldiers, their spouses and parents to inform the larger-scale Phase II study, which will survey soldiers who are about to deploy to Afghanistan and other countries and their family members.

The Phase II study will focus on 500 soldiers from Fort Hood, 175 spouses, and 175 parents, who will complete research questionnaires. Soldiers who volunteer to fill out research questionnaires will then be asked to invite their spouses and/or parents to complete the questionnaires. In this way, researchers will be able to evaluate and connect the experiences of all three groups. Future research will aim to determine how deployment preparation experiences subsequently impact functioning during and after deployments.

— Source: Baylor University