Author Description

Through its funding and implementation of youth programs, the Department of Defense (DoD) serves communities throughout the United States. The three predominant programs--STARBASE, National Guard Youth ChalleNGe, and Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps--serve more than half a million young people each year and have a shared commitment to providing service and positive outreach to communities. These programs have the potential to reach a substantial proportion of the U.S. population and may help bridge the civilian-military divide. There is no existing approach to assessing how well the programs fulfill their outreach goals. The authors developed an analytic framework to help assess the channels that enable these programs to positively influence communities and society more broadly. The authors hypothesize that if DoD youth programs function as intended--improving the trajectories of young people who participate and providing communities with positive impressions of such programs--community member sentiment toward the military will be more favorable, and interest in the military as a potential career path will increase. The authors surveyed school leaders for their awareness and perceptions of the DoD youth programs, examined one program's curricula, and estimated the extent to which these programs influence military recruitment and accessions. Although these are not comprehensive measures of the ways that DoD youth programs might bridge the civilian-military divide or support an all-volunteer force, they provide one indication of the programs' impact on the communities they serve.