Analysis of Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps Participation and its Effects on First-term Attrition, Promotion, and Reenlistment

This study investigates whether participation in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) significantly affects U.S. Navy enlisted first-term attrition, promotion, reenlistment, time to attrition, and time to promotion. The first term of enlistment is defined as the first four years of naval service upon accession (recruitment), which are mandatory by contract. This analysis takes data from the Defense Manpower Data Center enlisted personnel service member files of U.S. Navy recruits from FY1994-2000. Each recruit has seven year’s worth of data for each accession year except those from 2000, who have six. This analysis finds that JROTC has a suggestive, but not definite, statistical positive association with first-term attrition and time to promotion. Furthermore, JROTC has a statistically significant positive association with promotion, reenlistment, and time to attrition. Up to this point there has been little research conducted on the relationship between JROTC participation and propensity to succeed in enlisted naval service. This effort, coupled with LT Roy Lamont’s thesis on the effects of JROTC (March 2007), could yield significant benefit in determining the return on investment of the program from the retention and performance perspective.