The Well-Being Inventory was developed with an aim of capturing the experiences of all officers across the spectrums of race, culture, language, appointment, and lived experiences. We didn’t want to develop something with a specific group of officers in mind and miss out on the diversity of experiences officers might have. This attitude permeates all of the work we have done in developing the Well-Being Inventory and the work we are doing to make the Inventory better and more inclusive.
It really started at the ground level. The original idea for the Well-Being Inventory came from a diverse group of officers, gathered from around the United States. These officers had varying appointments (small corps, large corps, Kroc Centers, ARC, DHQ, THQ), differing family compositions (married, unmarried, with children, without children), spoke different languages (English, Spanish, Korean, French), and came from many different backgrounds (officers of many ranks, communities, and cultural backgrounds). The officers made it clear to us that they wanted an objective measure of how they are doing both personally and professionally, so that they could make changes or seek help before their concerns became crises. They asked that the process be as easy as possible, take up as little time as possible, and provide the most possible value for them and the Army.
From there, we developed a list of hundreds of factors that contribute to officer well-being and distill them into a single assessment. We had a clear goal of making the assessment easy to take, provide measurable benefit to the officer, and be capture the range of experiences represented in the diversity of the officers we interviewed. We were able to distill these ideas into 35 facets of well-being, that could be easily measured in a 30 minute online survey, using measures that were validated in diverse samples. All the measures we selected have been found to be reliable and valid in diverse samples from across the world, giving us the broadest possible impact with our Inventory. We think this work is worthwhile to capture the diversity of officers across the country.
As a diverse team of specialists, we know that culture has a huge impact on how we see the world. That is why we piloted the Well-Being Inventory with a diverse group of officers from across the country before deploying it more broadly. We listened to their feedback and made improvements along the way. Our goal is that you can take the assessment, feel that it applies specifically to you, without any extraneous details. For example, if you are a single officer, you won’t see questions about marriage. If you have children (even if you are single) you will see questions about your kids. If you don’t have children, you won’t. For the follow up interview, you can express your preference for consultant race, gender, and interview language. We tried to customize it as much as we could to individual officer experiences.
This also applies to how we will be interpreting this data. We want to interpret our results through the lens of culture. We want to help the Army identify differences in the lived experiences of officers. How is life different for officers of different races? What can we do specifically to support single officers? What can we do to improve the lives of officer children? How can we best support single officer parents? These are all questions we will have the ability to answer with the data from the Well-Being Inventory, but only with your support.
We ask you to take the Inventory and we ask you to encourage your friends to take the inventory. We want to have feedback from the broadest range of officers to provide the Army with the best data we can. Accurate data is contingent upon officers from diverse groups completing the Inventory. We want your voice to be represented and heard. The best way to do that is by completing the Inventory.
As we move into the future, we want you to know that we are continuing to work to improve the assessment. If you have any feedback or suggestions, we are open to new ideas. Feel free to contact Dr. Ian Mudge at ian@thelanierpractice.com he is responsible for the development and implementation of the Well-Being Inventory. We are also in the process of translating the Inventory into Spanish, French, and Korean. Given that the assessment needs to stay psychometrically valid, this process is unfortunately slow. It requires that we have the assessment translated into the new language, translated back into English by a new translator, then translated a second time back into the new language. We are committed to delivering translated versions of the assessment as soon as possible, but it will take some time.
Thank you for your interest in the Well-Being Inventory! We are committed to providing you with the most value possible for your time and that means we must make the Inventory culturally competent for use with officers from diverse backgrounds. If you have any ideas on ways we can make it better, please do not hesitate to reach out.
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