Abstract

This study presents an exploratory factor analysis of a questionnaire regar­ding military recruits’ social support from friends and family (i.e., Social support) for their voluntary enlistment, and participation in the basic military training. The participants consisted of the 1290 (1133 men and 157 women) who had been accepted to and started the first rounds of basic military training in the new Swedish Armed Forces All-volunteer Force in 2011. The exploratory factor analysis (Principal Component Analysis, with Oblique-rotation) yielded a simple structure where 11 of the original 13 statements loaded on four related factors. Two of the fac­tors consisted of the statements which were common to all participants, that is, all participants were able to answer them. These two factors re­garded an articulated support for family and friend, and an unspoken dis­approval, respectively. The remaining two factors where specific for the participants who had either been deployed on international operations previously, or were in (or had recently ended) a relationship. The study also explores the relationships between the emerging four factors and two questions regarding the participants’ rating of the importance of social support for their well-being (i.e., Importance of social support), and the prevalence of previous relationship problems (i.e., Relationship problems). However, the structure, and in particular the two latter factors need to be evaluated further, and the results should therefore be interpreted with caution. In addition, the introduction to this study presents a theoretical background to the field of social support, and its importance for military populations.