A Proposal for an Experiment with Navy Enlistment Contract Lengths

• Activity Number: 545
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 7, 2013 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Defense and National Security
• Author(s): Yevgeniya Pinelis*+ and Jennie Wenger and Jared Huff and Gerald Cox
• Companies: and CNA and CNA and CNA
• Keywords: Navy ; recruiting ; matched sampling ; manpower ; design of experiments ; control group

Abstract

The U.S. Navy currently sets contract lengths according to the return on investment (ROI) required from the initial training offered to the sailor. For this reason, over the past decade, most enlisted sailors have entered the Navy under 4-, 5-, or 6-year enlistment contracts. As the Navy is becoming more technical and sea-centric, longer initial obligations are needed to provide ROI and sea tour completions. Enlistment incentives can be employed to attract recruits to longer terms of service and help route them into specific ratings. Non-experimental nature of the available data on bonuses and other incentives severely limits possible analyses of their effectiveness. An experiment is needed to inform policy-makers of how these policy levers can be used to obtain various enlistment contract obligations. Recent economic conditions have induced a great recruiting environment in which an experiment with incentives is unlikely to harm the Navy personnel supply chain. We propose a pilot program that will help policy-makers understand whether they can allocate their enlistment incentive resources more optimally. Recommendations include experimental design, data collection, and analysis.