Study of attrition documentation at the U.S. Navy recruit training command

Abstract

This thesis examines the administrative separation process and attrition documentation as well as the characteristics of recruits who attrite from the U.S. Navy's Recruit Training Command (RTC). A random sample of 754 "retained files" from Customer Service Desk RTC was examined for attrition documentation and the information obtained was compared with attrition documentation contained in the Corporate Enterprise Training Activity Resource System (CETARS). The comparison is used to determine the accuracy of CETARS in documenting the reasons for medical and psychiatric attrition and its relationship to Separation Program Codes (SPD) listed on the DD 214 discharge form. The results indicate that CETARS is 95.2 percent accurate in documenting medical reasons for attrition and 94.2 percent accurate for psychiatric reasons. It was unclear whether a relationship existed between SPD codes and CETARS in documenting attrition. The specific reasons for psychiatric attrition include the following: Personality Disorder, Adjustment Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. In addition to the analysis of attrition documentation, we analyzed data on 216,028 recruits entering RTC between fiscal year 2000 and 2004 to determine the predictors of non-psychiatric attrites versus psychiatric attrites. Logit regression found that the predictors of both types of attrition were similar.