Study On The First-year Students' Mental Adaptability In The Military Academies And On The Countermeasures

Since 1990s, social environment and forms of war have undergone remarkable changes, posing unprecedented challenges for modern servicemen's mental quality and mental fighting ability. Under the conditions of informationized war, servicemen's mental health, education and training have been an important research project among military researches all over the world. Military students are the backbone of the army future and their mental health determines whether they are capable of shouldering the historical responsibilities that modern times empowers. Perfect mental adaptability for servicemen is one important factor to promote their growth and development, and also an indispensable quality in adapting to their military profession. For them, mental adaptability is one important aspect of their comprehensive quality, and an important factor to form the fighting power of the troop. They should work hard to promote their mental adaptability and lay a perfect mental foundation for their active self-growth. The current research aims to construct a mental adaptability inventory for the first-year students in the military academies to examine their mental adaptability. Meanwhile, based on the investigation, it attempts to put forward some countermeasures for military students to adapt to military life in a better and faster way.Based on literature review, open-ended questionnaire survey, and interviews, the current research puts forward the research hypothesis--- the first-year students'mental adaptability has several factors. Afterwards, relative items are collected, a mental adaptability inventory for freshmen in the military academies is self-constructed and data are collected from 2179 freshmen students in××,××,××and×××. Explorative factor analysis is used to test the question items to form the final questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analysis is used to test the inventory. What's more, statistical work is done to check whether there exists significant difference in sex, military academies, major, students'birthplace and categories. The corresponding countermeasures are discussed on the basis of the above investigation. Research findings indicate:The first-year students' mental adaptability in the military academies is a multi-dimensional construct. Five factors have been found for this construct through explorative factor analysis:living surroundings adaptability, interpersonal relations adaptability, learning adaptability, emotional adaptability and roles adaptability.The self-constructed mental adaptability inventory for freshmen in the military academies, have relatively high reliability and validity, which can serve as an instrument to test mental adaptability ability of freshmen in the military academies.Research findings indicate that there is no variance in sex in the first-year students' mental adaptability in the military academies. However, a statistically significant difference is found in different academies possibly due to the influence of concrete management styles in different academies. A significant difference is also found in the different majors, with students of commanding majors scoring higher than those of technological majors. The significant difference is also found in students' birthplaces. Students from counties scored remarkably higher than those from cities. Finally, significant difference is found in the categories with soldier-students sharply scoring than youth students.