Assessing and Evaluating Department of Defense Efforts to Inform, Influence, and Persuade: Desk Reference.

摘要

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) spends more than $250 million per year on information operations (IO) and information-related capabilities (IRCs) 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 (costeffective)? Are some efforts better than others in terms of execution, effectiveness, or efficiency? Could some of them be improved? If so, how? Unfortunately, generating assessments of efforts to inform, influence, and persuade (IIP) has proven to be challenging across the government and 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. This desk reference addresses these challenges by reviewing and compiling existing advice and examples of strong practices in the defense sector, industry (including commercial marketing and public communication), and academia (evaluation research), drawn from a comprehensive literature review and more than 100 interviews with subject-matter experts across sectors. It then distills and synthesizes insights and advice for improving the assessment of DoD IIP efforts and programs. An accompanying volume, Assessing and Evaluating Department of Defense Efforts to Inform, Influence, and Persuade: Handbook for Practitioners, covers many of the topics addressed here and is tailored specifically to personnel who are responsible for planning, executing, and assessing DoD IIP efforts.