TPC-Journal-V4-Issue2

The Professional Counselor \Volume 4, Issue 2 124 Research Design A nonexperimental, correlational design was chosen for this study. In order to gain access to a multitude of military wives, there was no specific inclusion criteria with regard to the soldier’s branch in the military, rank, or if the husband was active duty, Reserves, or National Guard. In order to attempt to control for the potential confounding variable of gender, this study included only stay-behind wives. Stay-behind wives may or may not have children. Finally, stay-behind wives must currently be in the post-deployment stage; therefore, the hus- bands must have returned from their deployment within the past 12 months (Vincenzes, 2013). Data Collection The sampling method used for this research was volunteer purposive sampling. Inclusion criteria included the following: female, currently married and experiencing the post-deployment period (within the 12 months since her husband returned from the deployment), and a deployment that had lasted 6 or more months. Approxi- mately 30 original e-mails were sent out to military advocacy groups, current military wives, the Army Wives Network, and a military advocacy group called Pennsylvania Americans showing Compassion, Assistance, and Reaching out with Empathy for Service members (PA C.A.R.E.S.). These individuals were asked to forward the initial e-mail soliciting military wives for the current study (Vincenzes, 2013). If individuals agreed to volunteer for the study, they immediately received a background questionnaire, which assessed the duration of deployment (independent variable). Duration of deployment was operationalized as the total number of months that the soldier was deployed, from the day he left until the day he returned (Vin- cenzes, 2013). Furthermore, the participants took the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995), which was used to operationally define the dependent variable of psychological distress . The DASS-21 is a 21-item Likert scale survey and consists of three subscales (Depression, Anxiety, and Stress). In addition to individual scores on the subscales, the assessment provides an overall global psychological distress level, which was the score this particular study used. The reliability for this measure was high with a .93 internal consistency on the overall global scale (Henry & Crawford, 2005). In addition, the DASS-21 illustrated good convergent and discriminant validity as compared to the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale and Personal Disturbance Scale (Henry & Crawford, 2005). Results Of the 145 participants who responded to the survey, 48.9% ( n = 68) met the criteria, but 14.7% (n = 10) had missing data. Thus, the final data sample contained 40% ( n = 58) of the participants who volunteered. The in- clusive sample accurately depicted the dispersion of active duty military (56.9%Army, 22.4% Air Force, 12.1% Navy, and 1.4% Marine Corps); however, fewer participants were associated with the National Guard (5.2%) and Reserves (1.7%) than expected. The age of the wives ranged from 21–47 ( M = 31.2, SD = 6.7), and 50% were 29 years old or younger. The majority of the participants (93.1 %) had some years of college (only 6.9% had a high school diploma/GED or less). Furthermore, 29.3% had some college, but no degree; 20.7% had an associate degree, 31% had a bach- elor’s degree, and 12.1% had a graduate degree. With regard to employment status, 53.4% of the participants were not employed and 46.6% were employed. The number of years couples were married ranged from 1–20 ( M = 7.2, SD = 5) and 48.3% of the participants had been married 5 years or less. The number of children under 17 who lived in the household ranged from 0–4 ( M = 1.5, SD = 1.3) and 51.7% had either no children or one child. The length of deployments ranged from 6–16 months ( M = 9.5, SD = 2.8). Finally, the length of time since the husband returned from deployment ranged from 0–12 months ( M = 6.0, SD = 4.2).