Command Climate Survey; why is it so difficult to get Soldiers to complete it?

I think that nobody really believes that they are anonymous. You get a number sent to you, so the belief is that they can be tracked.

Additionally they are sent to units, and then typically ask questions like race/sex, rank, time in service...you can quickly deduce who some of the participants are...

Then, there is the belief that nothing will come of the results, or, that they do not want to air laundry good or bad.

They need to be completely anonymous if they are to have any real effectiveness.

I've heard people say that they don't think their input will change anything, that command climate surveys are done just so the command can say that they did one. And that's very similar to one of the excuses people give for not voting ... my vote won't make much, or any, difference.

In my experience, Soldiers are told that thses surveys are about how the command team is doing. Soldiers may not have any experience with the command team only with their first line leader. If they have issues with their first line leader and maybe platoon Sgt, and they've attempted to get the issue corrected and nothings happened, they don't want to put it in writing just for it to be ignored again. I've also seen a command team who was more interested in the numbers of completed surveys than what was actually put in to the survey. It's a tough barrier to get through, but having good EOL's can make a big difference.