Administrative documents are written for readers who were not present, and DA Form 8014-R is no exception. Titled COCKROACH SURVEY (LRA), it is used to cockroach survey (lra) — a transaction that means little in conversation and a great deal in a file. The published edition here carries the date 12/01/1991 and the status ACTIVE. Its 1 page(s) and roughly 200 fields are sized to what the record must prove years later, which is always more than the moment appears to need.
The form has an author and an occasion, held by different authorities. TSG owns the content and reshapes it when what is being recorded changes. TB MED 561 governs the event that calls for the form and the route the finished document takes afterwards. Keeping those two apart is what allows a procedure to be amended without the page being rebuilt each time.
Retrieval governs the order of entry. The head of the form takes name, identification number, unit and date, and those values become the handles by which the record is found later — the substantive blocks are never searched on. This is why the spelling must match official records exactly rather than approximately.
Much of the form's behaviour follows from its being a fixed page. Tab order was set at build time along the reading sequence, which is why tabbing catches boxes a pointer passes over. Exclusive groups release one choice when another is made because a record cannot carry two answers to a single question. Single-line fields refuse to wrap because every entry must print where the layout expects it — text beyond the width is lost at the margin, visible on screen to the end. That is what remarks areas and continuation sheets are for. Marking a field that does not apply matters for a related reason: emptiness is ambiguous, and a reviewer reading the file later cannot distinguish an omission from a decision.
The signature is the point at which entries become an assertion someone stands behind, so it follows everything else and its absence leaves a draft. Countersignatures by reviewing, approving or witnessing officials each carry their own weight and are dated at signing, which is how the file preserves the order of responsibility. Seen that way, the familiar errors are not clerical trivia: an unanswered mandatory field, digits transposed in an identification number, day and month reversed, and residue from a reused file each put something false or unresolved into a document that will be relied upon.
The Privacy Act statement is on the page because collecting personal information requires the collector to disclose the terms first — the authority relied on, the purpose, the routine uses, and whether an answer is required or may be withheld. That order is the point: the statement is read before the entries it governs, since consent given afterwards is not consent. Once completed, the copy is a personal record and carries the handling obligations that attach to one.
Download the form
Why several files for one page? Because the form has to be completed in a headquarters and in places without a workstation, and PDF covers both. The fillable pdf holds interactive fields that fix each entry in place and remove handwriting from the equation. The printable pdf is the same layout without those fields, meant for a printer and a pen. Neither is a lesser copy of the other; each answers a condition the other cannot.
The choice of application decides whether your work survives. Browsers render pdfs as documents to be read; where a viewer shows fields without a mechanism to store them, typed text disappears when the tab closes, and nothing announces the loss. A full reader treats the file as a form and preserves entries on save.
Downloads are free and unregistered. The material was published for general use, and the files are passed on unaltered.
What the form asks for
- AMPLE
- BUILDING
- CNTPRSN
- COCKROAC
- COCKROAC_1
- COCKROAC_2
- COCKROAC_3
- COCKROAC_4
- COCKROAC_5
- COCKROAC_6
- COCKROAC_7
- COCKROAC_8
- COMMENTS
- COMMENTS_1
- COMMENTS_2
- COMMENTS_3
- COMMENTS_4
- COMMENTS_5
- COMMENTS_6
- COMMENTS_7
- COMMENTS_8
- COMMNTS
- CORONIGHT
- CORONIGHT_1
Disposition is prescribed, not chosen. TB MED 561 names the destination, whether that is a specific office, the unit administrative channel or the personal record, and the applicable records schedule governs how long it survives there. Both rules exist to keep the file consistent across offices with different habits. Take your copy before the document leaves, since it will not come back.
Forms cluster by series and number for the same reason files do: shared proponency and a shared prescribing directive usually mean a shared process. So a document in the DA series referenced on the face of another is generally part of the same transaction, and continuation sheets, cover sheets and transmittals belong to the package from the outset rather than arriving after a query.
An edition marks the form at a point in a process that keeps moving, and the date printed on the page is what distinguishes one from another. Since a saved file never announces its own obsolescence, compare its date against the current edition before using it again. Prior executions remain valid: the change applies forward, and a record is read against the edition it was written under.
A word on where this page sits. These are reproductions of published Department of the Army documents, made available by an independent site with no official role and no authority to issue forms. The structure described above — proponent, prescribing directive, records schedule — exists apart from this site entirely, which is why nothing written here is legal advice and why acceptance by any office is not something that can be promised. Put questions of entry, requirement or eligibility to TSG or to the administrative office servicing your unit.
Questions and answers
- What is DA Form 8014-R?
- COCKROACH SURVEY (LRA)
- Which edition is current?
- 12/01/1991
- Who is responsible for this form?
- TSG
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- PDF, PDF
Publisher notes
- 41-ITEM ALSO PRODUCED IN ELECTRONIC MEDIA