Test test. Test test. Test test test. Test test. Test. Test. Test. Test test. Test test. Test test. Test test. Test. Whats going on. Oh, the slides are cut off. Thats right. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, ill tell you what it says, the what we did is we redid that the comparison between the services, controlling for a bunch of differences that exists between the personnel and their experiences in each service. So we controlled for the age of Service Members and their race, their marital status, their education, their afqtc scores, which is a test of skills that enlisted. How many dependents they have. With we had many factors then we had all these military experience factors that we controlled for, including pay grade, entry age and rank and things like that. And then we also controlled for things like the environment in which theyre working in the military. So the fact is like, the percentage of men in the unit and installation as as dr. Scottsdale mentioned this is a known risk factor of proportion of men in your environment contributes to risk. So what we when you we controlled for all of these factors. We were sure we were comparing services on a completely apes apples to apples bases, at least in all the factors that we included in the model. What we found oh, theyre all cut off. What we found is that the differences between the army, the navy and the marines were explained. There were no longer differences between them, but the fact that the air force had so much lower rates was not explained at all. After controlling for all of those factors, after adjusting for them. Women and other services had 1. 7 times the risk of Sexual Assault as women in the air force. And men in other services had 4 to 5 times the risk of Sexual Assault as men in the air force. So what this suggests is theres something that explains quite large differences, four to five times is a big difference in social science research. Going on, theres something that explains the difference between services and we havent been able to identify what that is. Now, sometimes people ask, well, wouldnt if you went to a College Campus, wouldnt you find that there was similar rates of Sexual Assault at a College Campus, is this really a military thing. And i think that evidence like this is one of the best points of data we have that suggests there may be something to look at that causes big differences in risk of Sexual Assault. You dont need to go out and look at a College Campus to recognize that theres Something Big going on that differs by service, and could be understood better. And so one of our recommendations was to try to understand what are the factors to do more research, to understand what are the differences between the air force and the other services, could be that they attract different people and its the differences are just things we dont have we cant statistically control for. But it could also have to do with differences in the way the services are structured or, you know, how theyre organized or how the physical organization, like where people sleep may be quite different across services. I think we think it would be valuable and useful for Additional Research on why there are these large differences in Sexual Assault rates across services. Thats the second finding. The third one okay, is that working, yeah, thats working. The third point i want to make is about the differences between the reserve component members and the active component members. What you can see on this slide is that both men and women are exposed to lower risk of Sexual Assault than men and women in the active component. This is any Sexual Assault. We didnt just ask about experiences with someone in the military sexually assaulting you, its any Sexual Assault in the past year. So what so these are this is another very good comparison. These are all Service Members, one group of whom spends more time in the civilian world socializing with other civilians and in the civilian workplace. And the other spends most of their time in military environments and theres this big difference in risk. We did the same kind of Statistical Analysis and we dont find that any of the variables that we try to adjust for explain this difference. Theres another surprising finding that we had here, which is the high rate at which the Sexual Assault experience by reserved component members occur in military settings or with a military perpetrator. We reduce the size of the reserve component sample just to those people who are part time reservist theyre working 38, 39 days a year for the military. What we find is that 85 of the assaults that they experience in the past year were military related, which is, you know, which is a much higher proportion than might be expected. The lifestyle may be part of the explanation here, we dont know but we strongly recommended that this is another signal or clue about whats going on with risk in the military, that could be further pursued and understood to better drive down risks. Okay. The last thing i want to talk about concerns Sexual Harassment, Sexual Harassment is really quite common in the military. We estimate that about 116,000 active duty members were sexually harassed in the past year and about 44,000 experienced gender discrimination. Its so common that when we ask women of all ranks how common it is, more than 75 say, common are very common. And men, too, agree. They dont they dont agree at quite that rate. But close to 50 of men say its common or very common in the military. We know that Sexual Harassment is associated with a lot of negative workplace out comes involving productivity, retention, morale and other negative, you know, bad out comes, but as the doctor scottsdale mention, theres also evidence that Sexual Harassment is strongly associated with Sexual Assault. What we find in this data is that women who are sexually assaulted were sexually, harassed in the past year, were 14 more likely have been sexually assaulted in the past year. Very Strong Association there. And men who were sexually harassed were 49 times as likely to be sexually assaulted in the past year, as well. That doesnt prove that theres a correlation here. It could yeah, theres a correlation. It doesnt prove that theres a Causal Association between Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault. It certainly could be. It doesnt prove it. But it suggests that Sexual Harassment may be a very good indicator for where theres a problem. And if you and so one of our recommendations was that if the military could identify differences in rates across units, across command or across installations, that might be a way that they could identify those places where risk is highest and look at what are the differences occurring in those places, what are the features of those places that could explain the difference in Sexual Harassment and if theres as the correlation stands, differences in rates of Sexual Assault. So that was those were the four points i wanted to make and i look forward to our discussion in just after the next speaker. [ applause ] [ applause ] shes meritorious awards for sustained extraordinary performance leading multiple highly complex defense reviews. Today ms. Ferrell is presenting the findings of two gao reports, the november 2015 report on Sexual Assault in the military and very recently released 2016 report on hazing incidents involving Service Members. Thank you, ellen. Thanks for that elevation. Thanks to swan for having gao represented here today. We appreciate the opportunity to discuss our recent report on dods updated preventative strategy. Sexual assault is a heinous crimes that devastates victims and has a far reaching negative effect for dod because it under minds the departments core values, degrades Mission Readiness and is free to core, strategic goodwill and raises financial cost. Importantly, data suggests that recorded Sexual Assaults represent a fraction of the Sexual Assault incidents that are actually occurring in dod. Dod data report that reported incidents involving Service Members more than doubled from about 2,800 in fiscal year 2007 to about 6,100 in fiscal year 2014, however, based on a 2014 survey and by my colleagues. They estimated that 20,300 active duty Service Members were actually assaulted in the prior year. Since 2008, gao has issued multiple products and made numerous recommendations related to dods efforts to prevent and respond to incidents of Sexual Assault. For example, relevant to todays discussion is our march 2015 report on military male victims of Sexual Assault. We reported that dod has taken steps to address Sexual Assaults of Service Members generally and they like to refer to it as their policies or gender neutral. To address the Sexual Assaults of Service Members generally, but it is not used all of the data such as analysis that shows significantly fewer male Service Members than females, reporting when they are sexually assaulted to inform their decision making, such as tailoring their training or incorporating activities to prevent Sexual Assault. Gaos analysis of Sexual Assault prevention using the results of the grand study conducted for dod shows that at most, 13 of males reported their assaults were as at least 40 of females reported their incidents. Today i will primarily discuss our report issued in november 2015 on dods updated prevention strategy. Let me start, though, with some background information. For over a decade, congress and dod have taken a variety of steps to prevent and respond to Sexual Assault in the military. In 2004, following a series of high profile Sexual Assault cases involving Service Members, congress required the secretary of defense to develop, among other things, a comprehensive policy for dod on the prevention of and response to Sexual Assaults involving Service Members. In response to statutory requirements in 2005, dod established its Sexual Assault prevention and Response Program to promote the prevention of Sexual Assaults, to encourage increased reporting of such incidents and to improve victim responsibility capability. In 2008, dod published its first Sexual Assault prevention strategy. In april 2014, dod updated its prevention strategy and that updated strategy is the focus of my discussion. I will discuss two objectives from our november 2015 report that addresses the extent to which dod has, one, developed an effective prevention strategy, and two, implemented Activities Department wide and at military installations related to the departments effort to prevent Sexual Assault in the military. For the first objective we found that dod developed its strategy to prevent Sexual Assault using the cdcs framework for effective Sexual Violence prevention strategies. But dod does not link activities to desired out comes or fully identify risk and protective factors. Specifically, dods strategy identifies 18 preventionrelated activities but they are not linked with the desired out comes of the departments over all prevention efforts, a step that is necessary to determine whether efforts are producing the intended effect. Dod strategy includes activities, such as conducting specialized leader Sexual Assault training and establishing collaboration forums to capture and shared prevention, best practices and lessons learned. In a different section of dods strategy, it lists five general out comes of its prevention efforts, such as acceptance and endorsement of the values that seek to prevent Sexual Assault and in an environment in which Service Members networks support a culture of Sexual Assault prevention. Although activities and out comes are identified, dod does not discuss what, if any, connection exist between the 18 prevention related activities and out comes in the departments efforts to prevent Sexual Assault. Without a defined link between activities and desired out comes, dod may not be able to determine which activities are having the desired effect or when necessary to make timely and informed adjustments to its efforts to help ensure it continues to progress toward desired out comes. Also, dod may lack the information that is needed to conduct a rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of its efforts. Further, in adapting cdcs framework to address the unique nature of the military environment, dod did not fully identify risk and protect the factors, ie, factors that may put a person at risk for committing Sexual Assault or that alternative make that harm in its updated strategy. Dod adapted cdcs approach by identifying five domains and environment in which it will focus its prevention efforts and include risk factors for three, individuals, relationships and society. For example, within the individual domain, dod identified risk factors, such as alcohol and drug abuse and hostility toward women as risks that may influence Sexual Violence. However, dod does not specify risk factors for the two domains over which it has the greatest influence. Leaders at all levels of dod and the military community. For example, the strategy does not identify potential risk factors associated with these domains, just as recognizing that the inherent nature of certain types of commands or units may cultivate an environment in which there is an increased risk of Sexual Assault. One such risk factor may be hazing. In our february 2016 report on dods policy to address and track hazing, we reported that initiations and right of passage can be effective tools to instill a decor and loyalty among Service Members and are included in many traditions throughout dod. However, such traditional activities, as well, as more ad hoc activities have at times included cruel or abusive behavior and it is not always been easy for Service Members to draw a clear distinction between legitimate traditions and patterns of misconduct. Also, we reported that hazing incidents may cross the line into Sexual Assault. We noted the Service Officials and male Service Members at veral military installations gave us examples of recent incidents involving both hazing and Sexual Assaults. We found that a series of hazing incidents may es ska late into a sexual escalate into a sexual and Service Officials stated that training on the relationship to Sexual Assault would be particularly beneficial to males in that it might lead to increased reporting and fewe. Dod also included six protective factors identified by cdc in prevention strategy but does not specify how factors such as Emotional Health relate to the five domains. The protective factors that dod included in its strategy are grouped together rather than being listed under the beneath the domain to which they belong. Thus, dod may not be able to accurately characterize the environment in which Sexual Assaults occur or to develop activities and interventions to more effectively prevent them. For the second objective in our november 2015 report on implementing prevention activities, we found that dod and the military services developed and are in the process of implementing prevention focused activities, but theyve not taken steps to help ensure that these activities developed at the local or installation level are consistent with the over arching objectives of dods prevention strategy. As noted previously, dod updated prevention strategy identified 18 prevention focused activities and according to dod officials, two have been implemented in efforts to address the remaining 18 are on going. Dod officials said that the remaining 16 activities identified in this strategy will never be considered complete because as the program devel