The Mediating Role of Distress Tolerance in Relation to the Soldiers Violence with Desire to Escape due to the Performance of Commanders

Escaping from military service occurs first during a process of incompatibility with the situation, then violence, and finally escape. The aim of this study was to investigate the mediating role of distress tolerance in relation to soldiers' violence with desire to escape due to the performance of commanders.

This research was descriptive correlation based on structural equation modeling. The statistical population was all 280 soldiers of Imam Sajjad Educational Center in Urmia, Iran in July 2021. In this study, 210 samples were selected by the simple random sampling. The Buss-Perry Violence Questionnaire, the Simons and Gaher Turbulence Questionnaire, as well as the researcher-made questionnaire of tendency to escape due to the commanders' performance were used to collect data. To analyzing the data, Pearson correlation test and structural equation model were used in the form of SPSS 18 and AMOS 23 software.

Among 210 participants in the study, 139 people had diploma and lower degrees and also 71 people had a bachelor's degree or higher. Confirmatory validity and the measurement model of the three questionnaires were confirmed and the reliability was obtained by Cronbach's alpha method of violence 0.87, distress tolerance was 0.79 and desire to escape was 0.88. The findings showed that the soldiers' violence and distress tolerance due to the performance of the commanders on the desire to escape have a direct and indirect effect of 0.291 and -0.246. The standardized values of the indirect effects of the violence through the mediation of distress tolerance on the tendency to escape were confirmed by the Bootstrap estimation method and violence had an effect on the desire to escape through mediation of distress tolerance (-0.48) (p <0.01). Finally, the research model was approved and 41% of the desire to escape due to the performance of commanders could be explained by the variables of soldiers' violence and distress tolerance in direct and indirect levels.

The present study shows that soldier violence affects the desire to escape through the mediation of distress tolerance and importance of cognitive and emotional factors in explaining the desire to escape due to the performance of commanders.