IDENTIFYING INTERNAL MOBILITY PATTERN DIFFERENCES WITHIN THE CANADIAN ARMED FORCES

Abstract

During their career, members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are frequently assigned to a new position and can even change profession. This high, but normal, level of mobility within the CAF can potentially hide indicators of mobility pattern differences among women and men. This article presents a method to study the mobility of the CAF members over the last decade. We propose a series of statistical tests to detect trends and identify a list of conditions for which the mobility indicators differ from one subpopulation to another. Our analysis uses Fisher’s exact test to compare various populations for which sizes can vary from very small (less than 50) to large (tens of thousands). Since our approach allows us to do tests of statistical significance on small samples, we were able to perform a detailed breakdown of the CAF population (down to the occupational level).

Keywords

• personnel management and training
• career analysis
• workforce mobility
• categorical data
• statistical testing
• Fisher’s exact test