Validating Military Culture: The Factor Analysis of a Military-Related Adaptation of Acculturation in Veterans

Differences between military and civilian culture can impact a veteran's ability to effectively navigate the transition to the civilian setting after separating from military service. However, systems providing psychological services to veterans lack reliable and valid methods of identifying the extent to which the dissonance between military and civilian cultures is associated with postseparation adjustment (e.g., ability to integrate profound deployment experiences into civilian life) and psychological outcomes. Utilization of a theory-driven, acculturation framework to assess military and civilian cultural affiliation may address this gap. While several quantitative measures exist for evaluating acculturation in reference to different ethnocultural experiences and that evaluate military culture-related adjustment or reintegration, there are no existing validated measures rooted in cultural theory that explicitly assess military-related acculturation. The aim of the present study was to develop and examine the psychometric properties of theoretically grounded, military-related adaptations of validated acculturation measures. Data from 364 veterans were collected with an online survey including four military-related adaptations of acculturation measures. Results suggest that the proposed adaptation of the original ethnocultural measurement model was not a good fit to the data, chi(2) = 2396.99, p < .001, TLI = .73. An evaluation of localized areas of strain in the confirmatory model and results from an exploratory factor analysis suggest support for the continued development of a military-related model of acculturation after considering further measure restructuring and validation. Opportunities for future research and measure validation are discussed.