SATISFACTION WITH SERVICE AND SELF-ESTIMATED PHYSICAL FITNESS OF CONSCRIPTS

Abstract

Problems with health and, successively, physical fitness are some of the main reasons for discharging a conscript, and health related issues are the number one reason for attrition. However, questions such as how an athletic physique benefits military service, how a change in physical abilities affects a person’s satisfaction with conscription, and to what extent the interrelation between an athletic physique, changes in physical fitness and satisfaction with conscription depends on the im mediate social service environment and social group of a person, these have received less attention. Analysing these questions revealed that people who were leading a more athletic lifestyle before conscription tend to be more satisfied with conscription in retrospect, but a more important factor for the formation of satisfaction appears to be perceived changes in one’s physical abilities during conscription, i.e. changes in self estimated physical fitness. It was also revealed that the strength of this con nection depended on the cohesion of the service environment: if a person’s physical abilities improve during conscription then stronger cohesion amplifies satisfaction, whereas a coherent environment can also impede the loss of satisfaction when a per son’s physical abilities are reduced. The authors of this article included four different types of cohesion in the analysis according to data collected with complex surveys over three conscription periods: 2017/2018, 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 (N=5,290).