Date

9-17-2026

Department

School of Behavioral Sciences

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD)

Chair

Brittany Littrell

Keywords

virtual reality, firearms training, self-efficacy, leadership self-efficacy, perceived stress, gun attitude, military, law enforcement

Disciplines

Psychology

Abstract

Advanced virtual reality (VR) firearms training systems have demonstrated benefits for military and law enforcement personnel; however, limited research has examined the psychological effects of commercially available home-based VR firearms systems. The purpose of this quantitative quasi-experimental study was to investigate the immediate effects of the GAIM and AceXR home VR dry-fire training systems on general self-efficacy, leadership self-efficacy, perceived stress, and gun attitude among firearms-trained military and law enforcement veterans. A total of 128 participants completed validated pretest and posttest measures following participation in a VR training session using either the GAIM or AceXR platform. A one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to examine differences between the systems across the combined psychological outcome variables, followed by one-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) to evaluate individual outcome measures. Results indicated no statistically significant differences between the GAIM and AceXR systems on the combined dependent variables. Additionally, no statistically significant differences were found between the systems for changes in general self-efficacy, leadership self-efficacy, perceived stress, or gun attitude. Although participants in both groups demonstrated increases in self-efficacy and leadership self-efficacy and decreases in perceived stress and gun attitude scores, the magnitude of change did not differ significantly between training systems.

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