Reduced analytic uncertainty through increased analytic rigour: effects of using structured analytic techniques in estimative intelligence

Abstract

The post-9/11 intelligence reform’s endorsement of Structured Analytic Techniques (SATs) as a remedy to intelligence failures has been increasingly criticized, with a main argument being that SATs do not eliminate bias or increase judgement accuracy. However, previous research on SATs has predominately only focused on one technique, Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH), without procedural understanding of its use in the intelligence process. This research sets forth a comprehensive SATs-model for improving the estimative process in intelligence and investigates analysts’ experienced effects of using this SATs-methodology in the intelligence process. The main finding is that analysts experience that using SATs in a comprehensive, layered, and iterative manner in the estimative intelligence process increases analytic rigour and their ability to assess uncertainty. Using a set of interconnected SATs in a creative, critical, and sensemaking logic-process increases analyst’s analytic objectivity and integrity and thereby making them more confident in their key judgments and aware of the attached uncertainties. The effects furthermore remained years after having received SATs training. However, agency culture plays a vital role, both for the use of SATs and for the use of community standards for communication of uncertainty. Hence, leadership endorsement is important for SATs to be used by more than the dedicated few who have SATs as part of their analytical DNA.