Development and Initial Validation of an Acute Readiness Monitoring Scale in Military Personnel

Richard James Keegan; Andrew Flood; Theo Niyonsenga; Marijke Welvaert; Ben Rattray; Mustafa Sarkar; Lee Melberzs; David Crone

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.738609

Development and Initial Validation of an Acute Readiness Monitoring Scale in Military Personnel

Front Psychol. 2021 Nov 18:12:738609. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.738609. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Richard James Keegan^{1

2}, Andrew Flood^{1

2}, Theo Niyonsenga^{2

3}, Marijke Welvaert⁴, Ben Rattray^{1

2}, Mustafa Sarkar⁵, Lee Melberzs⁶, David Crone⁷

Affiliations

¹ Research Institute for Sport and Exercise, Faculty of Health, University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
² Faculty of Health, University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
³ Health Research Institute, University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
⁴ Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
⁵ School of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
⁶ Australian Army, Adelaide, SA, Australia.
⁷ Department of Defence, Australian Government, Edinburgh, SA, Australia.

Abstract

Personnel in many professions must remain "ready" to perform diverse activities. Managing individual and collective capability is a common concern for leadership and decision makers. Typical existing approaches for monitoring readiness involve keeping detailed records of training, health and equipment maintenance, or - less commonly - data from wearable devices that can be difficult to interpret as well as raising privacy concerns. A widely applicable, simple psychometric measure of perceived readiness would be invaluable in generating rapid evaluations of current capability directly from personnel. To develop this measure, we conducted exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis with a sample of 770 Australian military personnel. The 32-item Acute Readiness Monitoring Scale (ARMS) demonstrated good model fit, and comprised nine factors: overall readiness; physical readiness; physical fatigue; cognitive readiness; cognitive fatigue; threat-challenge (i.e., emotional/coping) readiness; skills-and-training readiness; group-team readiness, and equipment readiness. Readiness factors were negatively correlated with recent stress, current negative affect and distress, and positively correlated with resilience, wellbeing, current positive affect and a supervisor's rating of solider readiness. The development of the ARMS facilitates a range of new research opportunities: enabling quick, simple and easily interpreted assessment of individual and group readiness.

Keywords: fatigue; job design/work characteristics/empowerment; job performance/performance measurement; monitoring; mood; psychometrics/measurement; subjective ratings.