Military News

HDQA Tasker No. 09013001 ASIST Evaluation

Overview Summary

“There we were…” is an all too familiar way that many Army stories begin, so how appropriate to begin this article about the results of a recent Army sponsored survey of ASIST - except this is no tale and doesn’t involve any hand grenades!

The prevention of suicide in the U.S. Army remains a high priority. This fact was clearly evident back in January 2009, when there we were, beginning our day as like many others before, manning our stations in the office when we received the call – an urgent mission from Army Chief of Staff for Personnel (G-1), eliciting our involvement in assessing learning effectiveness of ASIST within the US Army.

Direct coordination ensued with the Army Staff and the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine (USACHPPM) which revealed the level of learning based on established Army Enabling Learning Objectives (ELOs) and Terminal Learning Objectives (TLOs), and appropriateness of ASIST for particular Soldier groups.

With our marching orders in hand, and recognizing the sense of urgency, our Army ASIST Trainers demonstrated that they were up to the task by quickly mobilizing and within a few short weeks, data started pouring into our office. The timeliness and amount of responses were equally as impressive. Results from pre & post-test surveys were collected from 18 Army ASIST workshops between February 17 and April 1, 2009 for a total of 502 respondents representing a broad cross-section of the Army across various demographics and locations, including two in Iraq. Ideally, an assessment of training effectiveness would call for a random trial design. Because of the quick turnaround requirement and already scheduled workshops this type of evaluation was not possible (hopefully a future mission).

In May, we completed our mission by reporting our findings back to the Army G-1. After their analysis, we subsequently received authorization to make the report available to our trainers. The complete report is available on our trainer’s website (https://www.livingworks.net/as/docs/armysurveyreport.pdf), or you may contact the US Office (usa@livingworks.net) directly for a pdf copy.

Without going into specifics contained in the actual report, I’ll summarize by stating that the survey results are consistent with a previous evaluation by the US Army conducted of ASIST by Health Promotion and Prevention Initiative (HPPI) from 2001-2002 that led to benefits at several levels.

Army participants had considerable suicide prevention training before ASIST, but less than one in six felt “well prepared” by this previous training. The limited experience of talking openly and directly about suicide (54% with no experience) suggests the stigma of reaching out to help and/or help seeking still may be a significant barrier – something that the Army is working towards reducing. Participant support for being “better prepared” to carry out enabling objectives (with a larger and more diverse participant base) was over 90%. This is strong support that the intended enabling objectives are highly valued by participants. Outcome results were limited to self-assessed confidence to help a person at-risk and opinion that ASIST should be required for all who interact closely with soldiers.

Overall, the evaluation supports the appropriateness of ASIST for the targeted groups named at the onset of the study. It also now appears that the Army is modifying its policy on using ASIST by now including mid-level “green tabbers” (those who serve in a leadership position).

On behalf of LivingWorks, we would like to extend a very special thanks to all of the Army ASIST Trainers for reacting so quickly; to the soldiers, Army Civilian Employees, and family members for participating, and to the Army Staff for their vote of confidence and support. We look forward to continuing to partner together for our ultimate joint mission of savin