This site provides ongoing research and analysis of Millennials’ and Generation Z’s attitudes toward the U.S. military and its role in the world today. It is intended as a resource for military leaders, scholars, and anyone interested in the future of military service.

The project began in 2002, shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Dr. Morten Ender and Dr. Michael Matthews, then at the United States Military Academy at West Point, initiated a research program to assess how young people viewed national defense and whether those views shifted in response to the attacks.

Soon after, Dr. David Rohall joined the project, and the collaboration expanded to include survey data collected from cadets at U.S. military academies, ROTC programs, and civilian colleges and universities across the country.

Over time, the project has collected more than 9,000 survey responses, with some additional international samples. Initially focused on Millennials (Generation Y), the data now increasingly reflect the perspectives of Generation Z, individuals born around the turn of the millennium.

The goal of this research is to better understand how young people view the military institution and how those views compare across groups, and how attitudes toward military service and national defense change over time.

This site serves as a platform to share findings from this ongoing work, as well as to highlight related research from organizations such as Gallup and other research centers. It is intended to provide a space for reviewing, interpreting, and discussing data on the modern military and its missions.

Methods

The data presented on this site are based on a non-random sample of cadets from U.S. military academies, as well as ROTC cadets and civilian students from colleges and universities across the United States. Additional data collection efforts include samples from European military academies and universities.

Participants are typically between the ages of 18 and 20 and are most often first- or second-year university students. This population represents individuals at the transition to adulthood—old enough to serve in the military but early in the process of forming long-term views about service, national defense, and global affairs.

Data have been collected from institutions across a wide geographic range, including states such as New Hampshire, Washington, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Dakota, Georgia, California, and New York.

Because the sample is not random, findings should be interpreted as indicative rather than representative of all young people. However, the consistency of data collection over time allows for meaningful comparisons across cohorts and insight into trends in attitudes toward military service.

The views presented on this site are those of the authors and do not represent the official positions of their respective institutions, including the United States Military Academy, the United States Air Force Academy, Ohio University, the U.S. Armed Forces, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.