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This study was aimed at identifying effective leadership abilities as appreciated by soldiers in the Lithuanian armed forces. Leader behavior was measured using an adapted version of the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ), which was originally developed by Andrew W. Halpin from Ohio State University. Data were collected from soldiers holding different ranks and doing professional military service in all units of the Lithuanian armed forces and were analyzed using the IBM SPSS version 20 software application. For our data analysis, the Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID) decision tree growing method was used with three class dependent variables. The CHAID algorithm helped in specifying the best splits for each of twelve potential predictors and then select the predictors whose splits presented the most serious differences in the sub-populations of the sample. In the Chi-squared significance test, the lowest p-value was achieved. The model structures obtained after analysis are presented.

This research aims to explore an analytical model, gauge the interplay between psychological resilience and achieved military competencies, and examine an intermediary role of effort, proactivity, and self-efficacy. In this study, 337 reserve soldiers from Lithuania were investigated with the Lithuanian Military Training Competences Assessment Scale, Resilience Scale, Self-Efficacy Scale, Short Grit Scale (Grit-S), and Proactivity Scale. Our findings highlighted the importance of the psychological resilience of reserve soldiers due to its positive relationship with the personality traits. Implicit interconnectedness between psychological resilience and psychological skills together with military competences was researched, and it became evident that self-efficacy determined a statistically important mediating role (indirect effect = 0.264 **, p 0.1; proactivity indirect effect = 0.094, p > 0.1). The research findings are important because of greater prominence of the role of reserve troops in military operations around the world and achievements in the domain of security and defense. This study has great theoretical and empirical value in making decisions concerning the psychological resilience of reserve soldiers' promotion and sustainable improvement of military preparedness strategies.

Previous research shows a nonlinear dependency between hair cortisol concentrations and perceived stress levels. This may be due to stress being targeted at the individual level despite it also being a social phenomenon which is often affected by group dynamics. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine the influence of perceived stress on the hair cortisol level, considering the impact of the variables of group dynamics (interpersonal, task, and norm cohesion). Information was collected on 11 groups of, in total, 112 young men in three phases of time during their compulsory military training (covering nine months in total). The classification and regression tree (C&RT) method was used to predict hair cortisol concentrations in groups. The results show that the variability of the hair cortisol level in young men groups can be explained by perceived stress only when the groups were in formation process (47.7% normalised importance in Model 1) and when the groups were working on their final tasks (37.80% normalised importance in Model 3); meanwhile, the importance of perceived stress in explaining hair cortisol concentrations is low when the group is in a routine period of a group life-span (28.9% normalised importance in Model 2). Interpersonal cohesion (normalised importance 100% in Model 1 and 80.0% in Model 3) and task cohesion (normalised importance 78.6% in Model 2) were the most important predictors in the study area. These results point to the importance of the elements of group dynamics when it comes to explaining the nature of hair cortisol as accumulated stress biomarkers in young men.

Compulsory basic military training is characterized not only by being challenging but also by being stressful. Assuming a high frequency of perceived stress events as a negative outcome of training, this article provides evidence on how the perceived frequency of stressful situations is affected by three types of factors: (i) biological stress response variables measured by hair steroid hormone levels, (ii) personality traits measured using the Big Five personality test, and (iii) group cohesion measures in military squads. A total of 112 conscripts in 11 squads participated in the research at the beginning (T1), in the middle (T2), and at the end (T3) of compulsory basic military training. Hair steroid hormone levels (cortisol, cortisone, and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)) levels were measured by liquid mass spectrometry; other data were collected using self-report questionnaires. The results of the Poisson regression analysis indicated that hair steroid hormone cortisol had a statistically significantly impact and could increase the perceived frequency of stressful situations by up to 1.317 (e0.275, T2) times. The concentrations of other hormones (cortisone = 1.157, e0.146, T3 and DHEA = 1.020, e0.020, T3) also had a statistically significant effect. Other factors had a decreasing effect on the frequency. Extraversion was significant with an effect of 0.907 (e−0.098, T2) and 0.847 (e−0.166, T3), while task cohesion had an effect of 0.946 (e−0.056) and norm cohesion of 0.954 (e−0.047). The research indicates that the three groups of factors affect the perceived frequency of stressful situations during compulsory basic military training, but their impacts are considerably different.

This study aimed to analyse the association between endogenous hair steroid hormones as reliable biological indicators of an individual&rsquo ; s stress level and the social environmental factors experienced during military training that are manifested at the beginning of compulsory military service. Hair steroid hormone concentrations&mdash ; cortisol, cortisone, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), and testosterone&mdash ; in a group of 185 conscripts were measured using the ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method. Six subjective social environmental factors in the military&mdash ; attitude towards the military and military service, adaptation to the military environment, team, task, and norm cohesion, as well as psychological (un)safety in the group&mdash ; were evaluated using military-specific research questionnaires. Weak but significant negative correlations were identified between cortisol and adaptation (r = &minus ; 0.176, p < ; 0.05), attitude (r = &minus ; 0.147, p < ; 0.05) as well as between testosterone and task cohesion (r = &minus ; 0.230, p < ; 0.01) levels. Additionally, a multiple forward stepwise regression analysis highlighted that cortisone variation might be partially explained by task cohesion ; the DHEA&mdash ; determined by psychological (un)safety in the group, attitude towards the military and military service, and norm cohesion ; and the testosterone&mdash ; determined by task cohesion and adaptation to the new military environment. The results of this study suggest that subjective measures of social factors can be used to predict hair steroid hormone levels as objective measures of the chronic stress perceived by conscripts during their basic military training.