Applications of an Analytic Framework on Using Public Opinion Data for Solving Intelligence Problems

Measuring and analyzing public opinion comes with tremendous challenges, as evidenced by recent struggles to predict election outcomes and to anticipate mass mobilizations. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine publication Measurement and Analysis of Public Opinion: An Analytic Framework presents in-depth information from experts on how to collect and glean insights from public opinion data, particularly in conditions where contextual issues call for applying caveats to those data. The Analytic Framework is designed specifically to help intelligence community analysts apply insights from the social and behavioral sciences on state-of-the-art approaches to analyze public attitudes in non- Western populations. Sponsored by the intelligence community, the National Academies’ Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences hosted a 2-day hybrid workshop on March 8-9, 2022, to present the Analytic Framework and to demonstrate its application across a series of hypothetical scenarios that might arise for an intelligence analyst tasked with summarizing public attitudes to inform a policy decision. Workshop participants explored cutting-edge methods for using large-scale data as well as cultural and ethical considerations for the collection and use of public opinion data. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions of the workshop.