Assessing and Evaluating Department of Defense Efforts to Inform, Influence, and Persuade

"To achieve key national security objectives, the U.S. government and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) must communicate effectively and credibly with a broad range of foreign audiences. DoD spends more than 2 50 million per year on inform, influence, and persuade (IIP) efforts, but how effective (and cost-effective) are they? How well do they support military objectives? Could some of them be improved? If so, how? DoD has struggled with assessing the progress and effectiveness of its IIP efforts and in presenting the results of these assessments to stakeholders and decisionmakers. To address these challenges, a RAND study compiled examples of strong assessment practices across sectors, including defense, marketing, public relations, and academia, distilling and synthesizing insights and advice for the assessment of DoD IIP efforts and programs. This handbook was designed to be an easy-to-navigate, quick-reference guide to planning and conducting assessments of DoD IIP efforts, analyzing the data generated, and presenting the results. It also offers some background on current assessment practices in DoD and the typical users and uses of DoD IIP assessment results. A companion volume, Assessing and Evaluating Department of Defense Efforts to Inform, Influence, and Persuade: Desk Reference, offers a more detailed exploration and additional examples of assessment in practice."--Back cover.