Postmodern values in the U.S. Navy: implications for morale, welfare and recreation programming

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This is a study of officer candidates of the United States Navy and Marine Corps that attempts to link postmaterialist values exhibited by the officer candidates to leisure categories that these individuals prefer and are motivated towards. Enlistment motivation has been changing from concepts of institutional and occupational themes to a postmodern or postmaterialist paradigm. Data were collected from three Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps universities analyzing for significant differences between Navy and Marine Corps officer candidates as well as for significant differences between those categorized as postmaterialist and materialist and their leisure attributes. This study is a replication of a previous study of Spanish university students (Ãguila, Sicilia-Camacho, Rojas Tejada, Delgado-Noguera, & Gard, 2008). Results from the study indicate that although the postmaterialist leisure activities and motivations measured exhibit a weak relationship with each other; there was no significant relationship between the postmaterialist index score and leisure activity frequency or motivation importance. Future research should be conducted to test whether the failure to replicate the tendencies of the Ãguila, et al (2008) study were due to unforeseen conflicts with how the postmaterialism index would be interpreted by the population sampled.