NOTICE: Due to a lapse in annual appropriations, most of this website is not being updated. Learn more.
Form submissions will still be accepted but will not receive responses at this time. Sections of this site for programs using non-appropriated funds (such as NVLAP) or those that are excepted from the shutdown (such as CHIPS and NVD) will continue to be updated.
An official website of the United States government
Here’s how you know
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (
) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
Developing a Difficulty Metric for Open Source Analytic Tasks
Published
Author(s)
T T. Hewett, Jean C. Scholtz
Abstract
Our goal is to produce metrics for assessing the impact of software tools and environments produced for the intelligence community. To this end we need to understand the variables that make some analytic tasks harder than others and to determine which data need to be captured to meaningfully assess the effects of these variables on process and effectiveness. In this paper we describe the initial stages of development of a task difficulty questionnaire and report some feedback on the questionnaire collected from professional intelligence analysts in the context of their work. We discuss some additional steps needed to further clarify and refine the task difficulty questionnaire and explore the implications for possible task difficulty metrics.
Hewett, T.
and Scholtz, J.
(2005),
Developing a Difficulty Metric for Open Source Analytic Tasks, International Conference on Intelligence Analysis, Undefined
(Accessed October 27, 2025)