Gorman, Linda
Thomas, George W.
General Intellectual Achievement, Enlistment Intentions, and Racial Representativeness in the U.S. Military
Armed Forces and Society 19,4 (Summer 1993): 611-624.
Also: http://afs.sagepub.com/content/19/4/611.abstract
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces & Society
Keyword(s): I.Q.; Intelligence; Military Enlistment; Poverty; Racial Studies; Test Scores/Test theory/IRT; Variables, Independent - Covariate;

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

racial composition of those who want to join the military reflects that of the general population. Using a sample of young men from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this article examines the effects of four different specifications of the independent variables race, poverty status, high school enrollment, age, and test score on an individual's enlistment intentions. The coefficient estimates were maximum likelihood estimates of a logistic regression model with an ordinal dependent variable. The results suggest that enlistment intentions depend heavily on intellectual achievement and poverty as well as race, and that models ignoring this may attribute false importance to the effects of race on intentions to enlist.