SOME PERSONALITY-RELATED CONSTRUCTS PREDICTING SUCCESS IN ESTONIAN MILITARY CONSCRIPTION TRAINING

Abstract

This article contributes to the research of personality and military morale, analysing the links between several psychological variables and performance. The effectiveness of the military unit is usually measured by indicators reflecting per formance, however in military conscription service successful completion of the training could be considered as performance. In order to better understand which variables are specific to higher and lower performing groups of soldiers, several psychological and socio demographic variables such as personality, military morale, affectivity, regulatory focus, self esteem, self efficacy, person organisation fit and age, education, mother tongue, place of residence and student status were included in the study. Performance, as a dependent variable, was measured through the theoretical, practical and physical elements of the soldiers’ basic training final exam. A sample of 241 conscripts from the Estonian Defence Forces (EDF) participated in the research and the Kruskal Wallis test with combination of ordinal logistic regression was used to analyse the data. The results indicated that openness to experience, person organisation fit, level of education and status as a student were the most influential variables related to the performance indicators.