Veterans whose behavior got them kicked out of the military have dramatically higher rates of homelessness than those who left under normal circumstances, according to a new study by researchers from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Among VA patients who served in Iraq or Afghanistan between 2001 and 2011, 5.6 percent were discharged for misconduct. Yet these patients accounted for 28.1 percent of veterans who had been homeless within their first year out of the military, the analysis found.

The type of misconduct that resulted in discharge typically involved drug or alcohol use.

“This is one of the strongest — if not the strongest — risk factors for homelessness observed to date,” said Jamison Fargo, a research scientist with the VA’s National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans and co-leader of the study, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The analysis did not include former service members whose offenses were so egregious that they were disqualified from using the VA. More than 142,000 service members have been dismissed from the military since 2001 with discharges that usually make them ineligible for VA services, according to data from the Department of Defense.