Military News, News From Iraq & Afghanistan - Military Times

Sampling the military

From Dec. 1 through Dec. 8, Military Times conducted an annual survey of active-duty, National Guard and reserve, and retired military subscribers.

About 36,000 subscribers received invitations via e-mail to participate. Of those, 5,181 completed the survey. Except where noted, data were filtered to include 1,947 responses from active-duty subscribers.

The responses “no opinion,” “declined to answer” and “other” are not shown for all questions. Some charts do not total 100 percent due to rounding.

Although public opinion pollsters use random selection to survey the general public, the Military Times survey is based on responses from those who chose to participate. That means it is impossible to calculate statistical margins of error commonly reported in opinion surveys, because those calculations depend on random sampling techniques.

The voluntary nature of the survey, the dependence on e-mail and the characteristics of Military Times readers could affect the results.