Can Structured Analytic Techniques enhance Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Assessments when providing Incremental Information

Abstract

Structured Analytic Techniques (SATs) have been incorporated within academia over the past several decades in an effort to enhance decision-making outcomes. Although, little research has focused on the effect of SATs within an operational environment such as Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Mission Sets. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of SATs when providing a vague narrative to human operators. Differences in response accuracy were investigate when a SAT was coupled with a narrative based on two different information workflow methodologies (i.e., complete narrative all at once or the narrative divided into incremental sections). Moreover, six groups of 25 participants each (N=150) were randomly assigned to one of three analytic techniques and provided a narrative with all the information all at once or the information provided in incremental sections. The SATs implemented were the Method for Defining Analytical Questions (MDAQ), which was developed in-house by our ISR subject matter experts (SMEs), a Scaffolding approach, and a Control approach. The findings provided evidence that implementing the MDAQ approach when given incremental information significantly improved performance compared to all other group configurations (p<0.05). This discovery will not only support ISR tool development, training exercises, and technology transition but could be beneficial in enhancing human computer interactions and human decision-making across other domains within academia and industry.

Keywords: Structured Analytic Techniques (SATs), Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR), Method for Defining Analytical Questions (MDAQ)

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1004486