On Dec. 10, we e-mailed a selection of active-duty, National Guard, reserve and retired military subscribers of our four military weeklies, asking them to take part in our annual poll. The respondents were directed to an independent polling firm that hosted the survey and tabulated the results. The poll was closed Dec. 17.

This is the fifth year that the active-duty force has been surveyed. It’s the first year for the retired military and the Guard and reserve. E-mails went to 14,552 active-duty subscribers, with 1,468 responding; to 5,595 Guard and reserve subscribers, with 945 responding; and to 8,999 retirees, with 2,937 responding.

The margin of error in the survey of active-duty and Guard and reserve members is plus or minus 3 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence interval, meaning there is a 95 percent probability that results of the poll are accurate within 3 percentage points. The margin of error for the retired military poll is 2 percentage points.

Those polled differ from the military as a whole in important ways — they tend to be older, higher in rank and more career-oriented.

Even so, it is perhaps the most representative independent sample possible because of the inherent challenges in polling service members, according to polling experts and military sociologists. The annual poll has come to be viewed by some as a barometer of the professional career military.