After the launch of the redesigned Defense Organizational Climate Survey (DEOCS) 5.0 in January 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Office of People Analytics (OPA) undertook rigorous quantitative and qualitative evaluations to assess the performance of the DEOCS 5.0. These efforts, in concert with stakeholder feedback, were used to streamline the DEOCS instrument. In line with OPA’s continuous improvement framework, the intent was to enhance the DEOCS and to reduce survey burden, while retaining the valid and reliable measurement of the DEOCS factors.
Streamlining included revising question text and reducing the number of questions per factor. In total, we reduced the number of survey items by nearly 30%, with the average decision points for participants reduced from 101 decision points on the DEOCS 5.0 to 73 decision points on the DEOCS 5.1. In addition to reducing items, we improved the organization, flow, and web presentation of the instrument. Importantly, the DEOCS 5.1 retains all risk and protective factors from the DEOCS 5.0 and allows for trending across all factors over time, except for the Safe Storage of Lethal Means factor.