AFMC Command News

Survey to gather information on command's state of wellness

  • Published
  • By Kathleen A.K. Lopez
  • Air Force Materiel Command Public Affairs
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio --  Do you think you have sufficient time to accomplish physical fitness activities? Do you feel you work in a non-hostile environment? Are you aware of counseling resources available to you on base? When things aren't going so well, do you have the resiliency to bounce back?

Air Force Materiel Command leadership would like to know answers to these and other questions so they can make your overall quality of life and productivity on the job as good as it can be.

In conjunction with the May 8 debut of the AFMC Wellness and Safety Campaign, command officials launched a voluntary Wingman Day Wellness Survey.

"The survey is intended to provide leadership measures of the four dimensions of wellness, which are physical, social, emotional and spiritual, as well as safety and other wingman initiatives as they currently exist in the command," said Col. William B. Martin, Individual Mobilization Augmentee to AFMC Command Surgeon's behavioral health chief. "Historically, we have collected metrics on incidents after they have occurred, for example counting the number of DUIs for the past month or the number of abuses reported.

"With this survey, we want to shift from an 'after-the-fact' information-collection mindset to one that gathers information early and focuses on what's happening in units and on bases," he said.

The colonel explained that by getting a sense of general wellness of the entire AFMC work force, command leadership can better assess the impact of the processes in place. Currently limited baseline data exists.

The survey is voluntary and available to the active-duty, civilian, Reserve and contractor AFMC work force. Employees represented by AFGE Council 214 are exempt from participating in the survey. It is anonymous in that no data requested would allow any specific individual to be identified. The colonel explained that extreme precautions have been taken by the Air Force Survey Program Office to ensure privacy.

"We don't want to know individual information, per se," Colonel Martin said. "Rather, at this point we're trying to ascertain a more global picture within a given organization, and thus, the command."

Answering the survey takes an average of five minutes. To access the site log onto https://survey.afms.mil/wws06/. Individuals taking the survey are asked to identify themselves only by employment status, i.e. active-duty, civilian, Reserve or contractor. Then, they are taken through a series of 16 questions that are related to the four dimensions of wellness, and safety. Finally, respondents are asked to identify their home base and unit.

Colonel Martin said the Wingman Day Wellness Survey will be available for two weeks. Afterward, the data will be analyzed by the AFMC Command Surgeon Office and provided to Gen. Bruce Carlson, AFMC commander. Information will then be provided to the command.

Future plans for the survey are to have it available quarterly in conjunction with future wingman weeks, the colonel said.