Guideline Development for Summarization of Tactical Data
Abstract
The present study was conducted to validate and expand the generalizability of a set of guidelines for summarizing tactical message content, and to develop guidelines for conducting a manual purge of a message file. Thirty-two Army staff officers studied a scenario and 30 enemy-situation- data (ESD) messages describing an enemy defensive operation. Their task was to summarize the tactical information in the form of an intelligence briefing. Half the officers were supplied with three general guidelines to follow in preparing the summary: (1) provide an interpretation of the data, (2) give a dynamic portrayal, and (3) use conversational style. After the summarization task, the participants were asked to delete 15 of the 30 messages and to rank-order the rest on the basis of importance. The 32 summaries were evaluated by seven military raters in terms of quality of content, interpretation, accuracy, organization, and style. The raters judged the summaries prepared with the aid of the guidelines to be significantly 'better' summaries on an overall evaluation scale and on four of five qualitative scales. Potent positive effects were revealed for all three guidelines. The ten summaries that received the highest overall evaluations were used to derive a general suggested outline for describing the message content.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1980
- Accession Number
- ADA107329
Entities
People
- Michael G. Samet
- Ralph E. Geiselman