Male Black College Students: Their Views of the Navy and Characteristics of a Navy Career

摘要

In spite of active recruitment campaigns, the Navy continues to have proportionately fewer black officers than do other branches of the military. This may indicate that blacks hold a poor image of the Navy. The purpose of this effort was to determine how black college males perceive the Navy and Navy careers. A survey questionnaire was administered to 1233 undergraduate males (904 blacks and 329 whites) at 12 colleges and/or universities in the southeastern and southwestern United States. Half of the institutions were predominantly black and half were predominantly white. Half had NROTC units and half did not. The questionnaire included items designed to assess how subjects felt about the various services, information sources, job or career aspects, and aspects of military careers. Respondents' views of the Navy and of the other services were measured in two ways. The first measure consisted of responses to the item asking them to rate their feelings about each of the services. The second measure was a composite of responses to items on desirable and undesirable aspects of a military career. Finally, two three-way analyses of variance were conducted to test the effects of the three independent variables: (1) the presence of an NROTC program on campus, (2) the predominant race at the institution, and (3) respondent race.