Veteran Voices: Survey Reveals Veterans’ Benefits Knowledge

How well do you know all the benefits available to you for your military service? Are there specific topics you know well, but others not so much? Where do you go to get news or information on benefits available to you?

We wanted to know these types of questions because we wanted to know what our readers want and need. The benefits available for servicemembers are often not the main motivator for someone’s selfless decision to sacrifice for their country, so it’s easy to understand that many may not be familiar with what benefits the VA provides. Our survey hoped to get insight on those types of questions, and also figure out what methods are easiest to explain and teach readers about the benefits available to them.

Key Points

• 60.7% of respondents say they’ve either struggled to access or understand their benefits.
• When asked to select all benefits they were most-familiar with, only three topics had a confidence level of more than 50% (VA Healthcare, 64.4%; VA Disability, 54.8%; VA home loans, 52.2%).
• Respondents say “Step-by-step guides” are the preferred method of learning about benefits.
• 92.4% of respondents were veterans

Scope/Methodology

The survey contained eight questions, starting with status (Active Duty, National Guard/Reserve, Military Spouse, Veteran, Civilian/Other) and which service branch they served. From there, questions asked about their confidence or familiarity surrounding certain benefits and eventually expanded into who or where do they get their information on military benefits.

The survey ran for most of the month of March, and received 1,530 unique respondents from our e-mail list. The 1,530 responses allowed us to achieve a 97% accuracy rate, with a margin of error of 2 percent (+/-2%) which exceeds most survey results’ target of 95% accuracy rate. To look for the margin of error, we used the metric of 18.6 million to represent the total number of active duty servicemembers, National Guard/Reservists, veterans and Department of Defense civilian contractors in the U.S.

Below is the breakdown of our results.

Veterans Knowledge of Military Benefits

The following data reflects how the respondents felt about the benefits they’re entitled to, and where they go to find any information or news on military benefits.

What Type of Content Veterans Want

Reaching veterans in a way that they could relate to and understand is, and has always been, the goal of us here at veteran.com. This showed us that many in the military community respond well to step-by-step guides, which makes sense because filing for benefits and accessing them often requires them to jump through administrative hoops or meet specific requirements that may be overwhelming or confusing.

On top of the step-by-step guides being preferred, our respondents shared that e-mail newsletters were best way to receive information about possible benefits available to them.

Conclusion

The Veteran Voices surveys we run will continue, as we want to continue to grow and evolve with the needs of our audience. We hope to release a study every 3 months to learn more about the needs/questions those in the military community may have surrounding benefits they’ve earned and are entitled too.