Assessing and Evaluating Department of Defense Efforts to Inform, Influence, and Persuade: Worked Example
Abstract
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) spends more than $250 million per yearon information operations (IO) and information-related capabilities for influence efforts at the strategic and operational levels. How effective are those efforts? Are they well executed? How well do they support military objectives? Are they efficient (cost effective)? Are some efforts better than others in terms of execution, effectiveness, orefficiency? Unfortunately, generating assessments of efforts to inform, influence, and persuade (IIP) has proved to be challenging across the government, including DoD. Challenges include difficulties associated with observing changes in behavior and attitudes, lengthy timelines to achieve impact, causal ambiguity, and struggles to present results in ways that are useful to stakeholders and decisionmakers. Previous RAND research, published in handbook and desk reference formats, distilled and synthesized insights and advice for improving the assessment of DoD IIP efforts and programs, drawing on a comprehensive literature review and more than100 interviews with subject-matter experts. This report expands on those previous publications by providing a worked example: an extended, concrete discussion of planning for IIP assessment in the context of a realistic military operation. It complements those earlier reports; ideally, the reader has read the handbook (or will read it in parallel with this report) and will refer to the desk reference for detailed explanations of the principles, concepts, and terms illustrated here.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2017
- Accession Number
- AD1030356
Entities
People
- Christopher Edward Paul
Organizations
- RAND Corporation