A Statistical Analysis of the Impact of Marital Status on Nuclear Submarine Officer Retention

This thesis develops multivariate logit models to estimate the impact of marital status and the independent effect of dependent children on nuclear submarine officer retention beyond the minimum service requirement (MSR). Using data from the Navy History Promotion File, the Naval Officer Fitness Report Summary File and the Officer Loss File, logit models are specified to analyze the probability of nuclear submarine officer retention beyond the MSR. The probabilities are modeled as functions of marital and dependency status, commissioning source, undergraduate major, age and early performance evaluations. The findings reveal that being married with dependent children at the 0-3 promotion board, being older at commissioning, being commissioned via an enlisted commissioning program and being recommended for accelerated promotion at least once as an 0-2 are all positive indicators of submarine officer retention beyond the MSR Being commissioned via the Reserve Officer's Training Corps (ROTC) and the Officer Candidate School (OCS) are negatively associated with submarine officer retention. Based upon the research results, recommendations are made to conduct further research to determine retention elasticities of submarine officers based on dependency status to determine the most cost effective means of improving roving junior officer retention.