Relationship between general obligatory’s training periods and development of personality tasks

  Aims: Training has great importance for the military forces of the country and has various effects on soldiers’ capabilities. This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of general military trainings on the development of soldiers’ personal skills in a military training center.   Methods: This quasi-experimental study was performed on 230 training soldiers who were dispatched on April 21st 2010 and were selected by random sampling method in one of the military training centers of NEZAJA. Data was collected using pre-test and post-test by a researcher-made questionnaire based on the five-factor model of personality (with making some changes in the model). Personal skills were operationalized based on seven components of personal experiments, self-confidence, programming, influence and perfection seeking, communicational skills, teamwork skills and responsibility. Data was analyzed by descriptive statistical methods and paired T-test using Minitab 15 software.   Results: The obtained average of personal skills showed a significant difference in pre-test and post-test (p=0.0001). The component of influence and perfection seeking (19.83%) had the highest change and teamwork skills (6.43%) had the lowest change in mean, between the two tests. Conclusion: General military training courses are effective on the development of soldiers’ personal skills with acceptable significance. The mean age of 25.1 years for the test samples, the briefness of the course and gaining some of these skills during the university education and work experience prior to the military services are considered to serve the most important causes of lower change in the components’ average.