Does Cadets Personality Change Through Education at the RMA

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46th Annual IMTA Conference Brussels, 26-28
October 2004
Does Cadets Personality Change Through Education
at the RMA? An Application of OCEAN
Prof Dr Jacques Mylle Royal Military Academy
Belgium
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Outline

• Mission statement of the RMA
• Background the RMA
• Some aspects of education/training
• OCEAN
• Working conditions
• Data collection
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusions

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Mission Statement

• We want
• to provide the national and international
  community with officers who are able to lead
  people in varied, complex and exceptional
  situations
• to integrate the values of the society and to
  promote our values in the society

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Mission Statement

• We do this
• By developing the total personality of the cadets
  by means of a multidisciplinary, integrated
  education at the academic, military, physical,
  character and ethical level
• ..
• We believe in
• the importance of taking initiatives and the
  sense of responsibility, perseverance, loyalty,
  solidarity, honesty and respect for others

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The RMA
www.rma.ac.be
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The RMA

• RMA military university
• Two Faculties
• Social Military Sciences (4,5 Y)
• Polytechnics (5,5 Y)
• Target group starting higher education
• ? competition with other universities
• Limited number of vacations contest
• Living in system (single two-bedrooms!)
• Paid for studying

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Some aspects of education/training

• Bootcamp (6 weeks)
• Discipline, respect, timeliness,
• Responsible for one self material
• Comradship - Team building
• Blue beret
• Integration week
• Learning traditions, adaptation to the new
  environment
• Playful activities set up by second year cadets
• Parrainage (godparenthood)
• Flambeau (handing over a torch values)

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Some aspects of education/training

• Sports
• 1 hour a day
• competition
• Military training (2 4 weeks a year)
• Dyadic ? Squad ? Platoon level basic skills
• Survival camp (paratrooper training camp)
• Parachute jumping
• Adventurous training (mountains, desert,
  amphibious,
• Peace Support Operations simulation exercise

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OCEAN

• Background Big Five
• Openess
• Consciousness
• Extraversion
• Agreableness
• Neuroticism
• US-UK collaboration (TTCP/hum 98-001)

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OCEAN

• 64 Adjectives (traits)

9 point scale extremely uncharacteristic -
extremely characteristic
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OCEAN

• 99 Statements (behaviors)

7 point scale (very strongly disagree very
strongly agree)
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Working conditions

• Translation Eng ? Dutch / French
• Take the factorial structure as is
• No Belgian norms yet
• Intranet-based application
• Cross-sectional analysis (1st year - 4 (5) year)

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Data Collection

• Participation
• Individual
• In free time
• Letter of motivation - Not forced to respond
• N (first) 42
• N (last) 48

Low response rate!
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Results
Raw scores
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Results
Evolution from 1st to last year
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Results

• Influence of gender
• no significant differences
• tendency Agreableness F (95.2) gt M (92.0)
• Influence of Faculty
• no signifcant differences
• tendency Openess SMS (131.0) Pol (135.8)

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(No Transcript)
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Discussion

• Effects of translation?
• Bias due to (non) response?
• Effects of social desirability?
• Effects of different motivation per faculty?

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Conclusion

• Results only tentative
• Do over the study with larger samples
• Follow up each year for cross-sectional
  longitudinal study
• Establish Belgian norms
• Compare with foreign cadets in same years

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Question time