“Respect” as a personal attribute in the British Army

This article describes the results of research into the social phenomenon of “respect” as framed by junior members of the British Army, as part of a wider study into the Values and Standards of the British Army. This research was interview based, using qualitative analysis software to detect, manage, and draw conclusions from the qualitative data recorded in those interviews. The data indicated that the primary situation in which “respect” was visualised by the participants was the unit context, and that it comprised a combination of three different strands: respect for rank or “hierarchical respect,” “professional respect” for a person's military competence, and “personal respect” for an individual's character, personal behaviour, and attributes. The overall respect that an individual is given arises from the combination of these three areas. “Respect” as a concept was, in the soldiers’ characterisation, something that had to be earned (except for the “given” represented by rank) and was not stable: a person's fund of respect could go up or down in social value. Respect was also linked to trust: the more respect a person had, the more they could be trusted. Although the unit context was the primary one for discussing their framing of the concept of respect, many of the participants reported a wider dimension in which every human being deserves a basic level of respect simply for being human, and this level could not be forfeited.