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2019 Workplace and Equal Opportunity Survey of Reserve Component Members
 
How to Contact Us

If you have questions or concerns about this survey, you have three ways to contact the Survey Operations Center:
Frequently Asked Questions


  • The Office of People Analytics (OPA) conducts Joint-Service surveys including the Status of Forces Surveys, QuickCompass Surveys, and Health and Resilience Surveys for the DoD. OPA was formerly a part of Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) but transitioned to its own organization in October 2016.

  • Health & Resilience (H&R) is a DoD personnel program that features web-based surveys sponsored by the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (USD[P&R]).
  • These surveys enable DoD to regularly assess the attitudes and opinions of the DoD community, including active duty and Reserve component members on the full range of health and well-being issues.
  • H&R supports the well-being of all members of the DoD community by providing in-depth research and analysis to inform policy makers on topics that impact resiliency, such as gender relations and equal opportunity.
  • H&R provides the Department with fast, accurate assessments of the attitudes and opinions of the entire DoD community to evaluate existing programs and policies, establish baseline measures before implementing new programs and policies, and monitor progress of programs and policies and their effects on the Total Force.

  • The 2019 WEOR is an official DoD survey sponsored by the Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ODEI).
  • The survey has gone through approvals at all levels of DoD leadership, including Service leadership coordination, and has been reviewed and approved by the DoD Privacy office and DoD Human Research Protections Program. The survey is also licensed by the Washington Headquarters Service (WHS).
  • In accordance with DoD Instruction 8910.01, all data collection in DoD must be licensed and show that license as a Report Control Symbol (RCS) with an expiration date. The RCS for this survey is RCS# P&R(QD)1946, expiring 12/21/20.

  • While all Reserve component members have been invited to participate in this annual survey, members were randomly assigned to complete specific content blocks.
  • OPA uses well-established, scientific procedures to randomly select a sample that represents the Defense community based on combinations of demographic characteristics (e.g., location, paygrade) when assigning members to complete specific content blocks.

  • This is your chance to be heard on issues that directly affect you, including satisfaction with aspects of military life, policies and practices regarding general workplace respect issues, diversity and inclusion, and racial/ethnic relations in the military.
  • As policies and resources may be informed by the results of this survey, it is important to hear from all members randomly selected to participate, regardless of their experiences, in order to understand the experiences of the Reserve component.
  • Your responses on this survey make a difference.

  • Web administration enables us to get survey results to senior Defense leaders faster.

  • The survey is administered by our contractor, Data Recognition Corporation, an experienced survey operations company. The survey collection tool starts on a .mil site within OPA. Once you enter your ticket number, you are redirected to our contractor's site which uses a .net domain. This allows everyone to access the survey, even from a non-government computer.
  • The contractor system is accredited according to DoD Instruction 8510.01 “Risk Management Framework for DoD IT” (RMF) and complies with annual Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) security control testing. A .mil server is not required for this effort because it is considered research and not an operational requirement.

  • This survey is voluntary, and therefore, it is not necessary to answer every question. We ask that you answer as many as you feel comfortable answering.
  • Within the survey screen, you have three control buttons: Next (→), Previous (←), and Save and Return Later. Use these buttons to navigate through the survey or skip questions. Use Save and Return Later to give yourself flexibility to complete the survey at a convenient time. When you return to the survey website, enter your Ticket Number to get to the place in the survey where you had stopped.

  • OPA reports overall results, as well as by other characteristics, such as race/ethnicity and gender. To complete these analyses, we must ask respondents for these types of demographic information. Analyzing results in this way provides Defense leaders information about the attitudes and concerns of all subgroups of personnel so that no groups are overlooked. Sometimes sensitive questions are asked in order to improve personnel policies, programs, and practices.
  • Your answers to any personal questions are strictly used for this purpose and will not be used to identify individual respondents. As with all questions on this survey, your responses are confidential. This survey has also received a federal “Certificate of Confidentiality” that provides OPA with additional protection against any attempt to subpoena confidential survey records.

  • No. The Department is required to conduct this survey, but your participation is completely voluntary. You may choose not to participate and can opt out of the survey at any time. You may also skip over any questions you do not wish to answer.
  • If you do not wish to participate or receive additional reminders about this survey, you may opt out by e-mailing OPA's Survey Processing Center at WEO-Survey@mail.mil or calling toll-free at 1-800-881-5307. You must provide your ticket number to do so.

  • The survey is confidential. Therefore, any responses you provide regarding experiences of unwanted racial/ethnic-related behaviors will not impact your reporting options. OPA has also received a federal “Certificate of Confidentiality” that provides additional protection against any attempt to subpoena confidential survey records.
  • All data will be reported in the aggregate and no individual data will be reported.
  • We encourage you to safeguard your Ticket Number to prevent unauthorized access to your survey. In addition, to ensure your privacy, be aware of the environment in which you take the survey (e.g., take the survey when no one else is home, take care to not leave the survey unattended).
  • If you answer any items in such a way that you indicate distress or being upset, you will not be contacted for follow-up purposes. However, if you indicate a direct threat to harm yourself or others within responses or communications about the survey, because of concern for your welfare, OPA may notify an office in your area for appropriate action.

  • This survey is “confidential,” not “anonymous.” In confidential surveys conducted by OPA, the identifying information of respondents is only used by government and contractor staff engaged in, and for purposes of, survey research (e.g., selecting, contacting, and tracking the participation of respondents).
  • Individual survey responses received by OPA are kept in separate files from the personally identifiable information of respondents used to solicit survey participation and OPA only tracks survey responses back to individual respondents if a respondent indicates potential harm to self or others in survey responses or communications about the survey. Otherwise, survey responses are not tracked back to individual participants by OPA and survey results are reported in the aggregate so that no individual respondents can be identified.
  • OPA's use of the word “confidential” is similar to its routine use in privacy statements within the health professions to denote that the information collected can potentially identify the individual respondent, but this information will not be shared with others unless compelled by law or written consent.

  • A “Certificate of Confidentiality” is an additional privacy assurance provided by the Department of Health and Human Services that the identifiable information and responses of a research project's respondents will be protected from compelled disclosure in administrative, legislative, or other investigative proceedings (e.g., protection from a subpoena).
  • Section 301(d) of the Public Health Service Act (42 USC 214(d)) authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to provide these Certificates to qualifying biomedical and behavioral research of a sensitive nature.
  • While the Certificate protects against involuntary or forced disclosures of information (e.g., a subpoena) that could identify survey respondents, it does not limit voluntary disclosure of this information in matters such as child abuse or a respondent's threatened violence to self or others.

  • If you wish to withdraw your answers, please notify the Survey Processing Center prior to November 25, 2019 by sending an e-mail to WEO-Survey@mail.mil or calling, toll-free 1-800-881-5307. Please include in the e-mail or phone message your name and Ticket Number.
  • Unless withdrawn, partially completed survey data may be used after that date.