Megan Thompson

• Ph.D.
• Researcher at Defence Research and Development Canada, Toronto

The “civil–military gap” is a significant factor that can hinder the success of complex comprehensive approach missions. Perhaps nowhere is this gap more apparent than in the relationship between military and civilian nongovernmental organizations. Interagency education and training have been suggested as ways to diminish this divide. This research...

International responses to humanitarian disasters, terrorism, criminal activities, and pandemics have increasingly involved integrated multiagency civil–military teams whose success depends on their ability to effectively share information. Trust is critical to effective collaboration and information sharing in civilian, military, and multiagency t...

We investigated the ethical decision making processes and intentions of 151 military personnel responding to one of two ethical scenarios drawn from the deployment experiences of military commanders. For each scenario, option choice and perspective affected decision making processes. Differences were also found between the two scenarios. Results ad...

There is growing evidence that modern missions have added stresses and ethical complexities not seen in previous military operations and that there are links between battlefield stressors and ethical lapses. Military ethicists have concluded that the ethical challenges of modern missions are not well addressed by current military ethics educational...

This research explored the ethical decision-making process of civilians in response to real-world military dilemmas. Results revealed the complexity of these dilemmas, with about equal proportions of civilians choosing each of two response options. The moral intensity dimension of social consensus significantly predicted moral judgment in both dile...

Establishing and maintaining trust between military organizations and the local population being assisted is considered to be integral to the success of international military operations. A lack of trust in military organizations on the part of the indigenous population may strain the relationship between these two groups, a situation which may, in...

39 members of Other Government Departments (OGDs) including 14 from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), 11 from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), and 14 members of civilian police organizations (CIVPOL), completed a short questionnaire assessing their perceptions of the training effectiveness of Ex...

One objective of DRDC Toronto's Trust in Military Teams Applied Research Project (16kx) was to develop reliable and valid measures of trust in teams and leaders at the level of small military units (i.e., section level). Several research studies resulted in initial versions of two measures: the Trust in Teams and Trust in Leaders Scales. These init...

For military personnel, the post-deployment period can be associated with changes affecting their quality of life, the quality of their close relationships, and their attitudes concerning their military careers. There is, however, little published research concerning this process, and a major weakness of the previous work is the lack of an establis...

Military operations have always held the potential for the encountering of moral dilemmas by military personnel. The current research involved secondary data analyses of an intensive interview study of Canadian Forces senior officers, each of whom had confronted a moral dilemma (i.e., situations or circumstances in which at least two core values ar...

DRDC Toronto is the Agency's research centre that provides guidance, innovation and knowledge about the human's response to the complex and stressful environments that impact CF members in preparation for, during and following humanitarian, peace-keeping and warfighting operations. The Agency has invested in DRDC Toronto to ensure that we can simul...

We sought to answer two questions via this exploratory study. First, we investigated whether or not individual differences in moral principle selection/preference existed in response to six moral dilemmas. Second, we sought to find out whether they were related to the demographic variables of sex and age. As part of a larger study on moral decision...

A guiding principle of the work of this panel on multinational coalitions is an acknowledgement of the multitude of factors that can affect teamwork under such challenging conditions. Individual differences in cognitive processing is one such factor that the panel has cited as relevant to effective operations of teams in general, and multinational...

Reports an error in "Development of Two Reliable and Valid Measures of Stressors in Policing: The Operational and Organizational Police Stress Questionnaires" by Donald R. McCreary and Megan M. Thompson (International Journal of Stress Management, 2006[Nov], Vol 13[4], 494-518). The authors of this paper carried out this research on behalf of the G...

To examine the effects of 30 hr of sleep loss and continuous cognitive work on performance in a distributed team decision-making environment. To date, only a few studies have examined the effect of sleep loss on distributed team performance, and only one other to our knowledge has examined the relationship between sleep loss and social-motivational...

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 14(3) of International Journal of Stress Management (see record 2007-12374-002). The authors of this paper carried out this research on behalf of the Government of Canada, and, as such the copyright in this paper belongs to the Crown, that is to the Canadian government. Non-exclu...

For military personnel, the process of post-deployment reintegration can lead to intra- and/or interpersonal changes that may influence the quality of their relationships with family, friends, and coworkers, as well as their attitudes concerning their military career. The current study is part of a program of research investigating the nature and i...

We examined whether responses to three comparative judgment tasks conformed to a general- or a task-specific model of decision making and confidence. We sought to determine if individual differences in confidence and decision making were evident for these tasks, and if cognitive styles accounted for these individual differences. Undergraduate stude...

Elevated hearing thresholds have been documented in some astronauts after long-term spaceflights although noise levels were lower than those normally associated with noise-induced hearing loss in ground-based operations. The present study was conducted to determine whether prolonged exposure (70 h) to levels (72 dBA) recorded on the International S...

The present study investigated Eysenck's predictions concerning the correlation of personality to arousal at higher levels of stress. Twenty young adults were exposed to a physical stress causing great discomfort, specifically a cold wind (4 degrees C at 60 km/h) exposure to the face for 3 min. Autonomic nervous system (ANS) responses were measured...

Tolerance to cold and heat exposure shows large variations for which there is still insufficient explanation. On the other hand the relationship between the responses to mental stress and individual personality is well documented. The aim of this study was then to find if personality traits have some influence on the responses to environmental temp...

How might individuals' typical decision-making styles affect the quality and latency of their decisions? In a first study, 48 adults completed three measures of cognitive styles, including the Personal Need for Structure and Personal Fear of Invalidity scales (PNS and PFI; Thompson, Naccarato, Parker, & Moskowitz, 2001), and the Need for Cognition...

A total of twenty-five subjects were cloistered for a period of 70 hours, five at a time, in a hyperbaric chamber modified to simulate the conditions aboard the International Space Station (ISS). A recording of 72 dBA background noise from the ISS service module was used to simulate noise conditions on the ISS. Two groups experienced the background...

Despite the military personnel and resources devoted to peace support operations, little information exists concerning aspects of predeployment training. This research explores the extent to which 119 deployed CF peacekeepers report using each aspect of their predeployment training during their current deployment, and their confidence in applying p...

The present report summarizes psychometric analyses from a sample of 375 Canadian Forces personnel who were undergoing predeployment training for peace support missions. In order to establish the psychometric quality of the scales, reliability analyses, and in selected cases factor analyses were conducted on the 25 scales, reliability analyses, and...

This report reviews a research proposal, the major objective of which is to assess the relation between PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and limbic, paralimbic, and prefrontal brain function as assessed with functional MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), and to determine whether an Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) interventio...

This report reviews the theory of the Adversity Quotient (AQ), and the associated training procedure developed by Stoltz (1997; 2000). This report covers three general areas. First, we present an overview of the AQ conceptual framework and training program. Second, the psychometric properties of the AQ are reviewed to determine if the proposed conc...

The present report summarizes psychometric analyses and recommendations for item refinement of the Family Issues scale a measure included a predeployment survey of operational stress among Canadian Forces personnel. Inspection of the items comprising the Family Issues scale revealed two distinct sections. The first section included 14 items that as...

Canada has a long and distinguished history of peacekeeping service, yet research from within the Canadian Forces indicates that the psychological and interpersonal toll of these missions on CF personnel can be quite high E.G., 1; 2; 3; 4; 5. The Peace Support Operations Adaptation Model (PSOAM), introduced here, details the adaptation process begi...

This study investigated the effectiveness of experiential cross-training in a team context for team decision-making under time stress in a simulated naval surveillance task. It was hypothesized that teams whose members explicitly experience all team positions will perform better under time pressure due to a better shared Team Interaction Model (Can...

The Homecoming Issues scale, developed by the Directorate of Human Resources Research and Evaluation (DHRRE) in support of the Human Dimensions of Operations (HDO) project, is designed to assess aspects relevant to the homecoming experience of Canadian Forces (CF) peacekeepers. The Homecoming Issues scale was distributed as part of the HDO's Postde...

Cognitive styles are differences that document individuals' preferred information gathering and decision making styles. In the present research, a large-scale survey study was conducted to establish normative values of cognitive style variables for a military sample. Establishing the comparable nature of these samples is necessary for extrapolating...

D. M. Webster and A. W. Kruglanski's (1994) Need for Closure Scale (NFCS) confounds multiple dimensions and is redundant with existing instruments (S. L. Neuberg, T. N. Judice, & S. G. West, 1997). A. W. Kruglanski and his colleagues (1997) dismissed these findings as "psychometric naysaying," although they presented no data that refute them. Moreo...

[discusses] the psychological dynamics of ambivalence in close relationships [focusing] on the interface of motivation and cognition / describes the historical background of the ambivalence concept in general / review the relevant research conducted in the field of close relationships / present the results of our research concerning the nature and...

Historically, attitude theory and research has assumed that attitudes are largely unconflicted and unidimensional summary statements of feelings and beliefs. More recent work has reexamined this assumption (Thompson, Zanna, & Griffin, in press). The present article details two studies that continue to investigate this notion, examining antecedent v...

reconceptualizes attitude structure as 2 dimensional in nature and details the challenges encountered in the course of developing a valid measure of ambivalence / 1st provide an historical background of the concept of ambivalence in attitude theory / present a critical analysis of 3 measures of ambivalence, 2 of which have been previously used in t...

1. Abstract In this study, we assess the relations among deployment stressors, coping responses, and psychological well-being among 219 Canadian soldiers after returning home from a peacekeeping deployment. We found that coping responses are at least as important as the objective experiences in determining psychological adjustment among peacekeeper...

With psychological injuries accounting for between 10-50% of operational casualties, there is consistent evidence that adequate psychological preparation for deployments is a vital operational requisite. Beyond the psychological costs to soldiers, empirical results also indicate that the stressors found in military contexts can contribute to errors...