reaction, and credibility of people to indigenous public information. Distribution of non-indigenous propaganda materials (leaflets, radio broadcasts, and loudspeaker broadcasts). Attitude, reaction, and credibility among local people. Numbers of people who listen to or see nonindigenous propaganda. Word-of-mouth communication and gossip systems. Meetings, speech making, and other modes of information dissemination. Postal system. Telephone system. Telegraph and teletype systems.

Personal Care and Decoration. Cleanliness. Perfumes. Sanitation. Personal apperance (hair-dressing, nails, teeth, cosmetics, tattoos, clothing, personal ornaments, recognition marks, and visible symbols of rank, emblems and badges, membership in organizations, status).

Housing. Patterns of housing in cities, towns, and villages. Description of interiors and exteriors of houses. Lists of and placement of all objects found in each room and in and around houses. Functions of each room of a house or apartment and facilities near the dwelling. Ownership of houses. Who lives in houses-family relationship. Assignment of houses. Arrangement of houses in villages. Other structures in villages. Urban dwellings-houses, apartments, and rooms. Relation of dwelling to place of employment. Shortage of houses. Attitude of people to housing.

Food. Foods and their preparation. Seasonal variations. Availability of food and drink. Preservation and storage of food. Cooking techniques. Nature and times of all meals. Condiments. Special customs. Rationing of food. Forbidden food. Food preferences. Water and other liquids consumed-source, availability, and preparation. Stimulants and narcotics. Attitudes of the people relating to all of the above.

Travel and Transportation. Modes of travel and transportation. Vehicles. Routes and roads. Restrictions and documentation related to travel and transportation. Resettlement of population. Migration.

The Arts. Drawing, painting, sculpture, music, musical instruments, dancing, singing, literature, poetry, drama, games, and amusements. Descriptions of the preceding. When and where do they take place? Sponsorship of such activities.

Health and Sanitation. Medical Practices. Modern and traditional medical techniques. Personal hygiene. Training of practitioners. Medical organization and system. Availability of medical service and supplies at all levels. Attitude and reaction of people to medical services.

THE NVA SOLDIER IN SOUTH VIETNAM AS A PSYOP TARGET* BY THE JUSPAO PLANNING OFFICE

The presence of soldiers in a country other than that of their origin, even when this country of deployment has had a long history of close cultural contact with their country of origin, offers a variety of themes to PSYOP unavailable for use against indigenous forces.

*Excerpts from PSYOPS POLICY, No 59, 20 February 1968 JUSPAO Planning Office, Saigon, Republic of Vietnam.

PROBLEM

To focus PSYOP more effectively on the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldier in South Vietnam; devise surrender or defection appeals for dissemination to NVA units in South Vietnam (SVN); and provide field personnel with information on the most recent vulnerabilities and deterrents to surrender or defection in the psychological makeup of the NVA soldier.

DISCUSSION

The North Vietnamese soldier in South Vietnam presents a particularly difficult target for GVN/US PSYOP aimed at inducing surrender or defection. He has a relatively high state of indoctrination, reinforced by a range of psychological controls wielded by the cadre which include selfcriticism sessions, the three-man cell, and the endless repetition of communist themes. A contributory reason for the resistance of the NVA soldier to Chieu Hoi inducements is that unlike the Viet Cong, defection for most does not hold the promise of an early family reunion.

Moreover, unlike the VC guerrilla who may be a teenager conscripted from his hamlet environment by VC "recruiters" and sent into battle without much party schooling and political indoctrination, the NVA soldier is the product of a closed, totalitarian society, subjected to communist indoctrination from his earliest school days. This makes him more resistant as a PSYOP target. Unlike the VC he finds himself fighting in a region unfamiliar and semi-antagonistic to him, usually in relatively uninhabited areas and with little chance for contact with the civilian population.

There are three options that should be pointed out to him in US/GVN PSYOP messages:

The first is to rally, take advantage of the Chieu Hoi program and in short order become a free citizen of the RVN. (Until further notice, only defection appeals as outlined in PSYOP Policy #57 of 8 Feb 68 are to be observed.)

Second is to surrender as a prisoner of war and await repatriation at the end of the war in the safety and relative comfort of a prisoner of war camp.

As a third alternative, until the opportunity of either rallying or surrendering may present itself, NVA soldiers should be counseled to devote all their efforts to individual survival rather than getting killed or maimed for an unjust cause. Malingering, the avoidance of risks, passive resistance to the exhortations of the cadre should be stressed as a way to survive the war. Even a partial success in this PSYOP effort will contribute to shortening the war by reducing the combat effectiveness of NVA units.

While a decision to rally will be personally more advantageous to the individual, it may involve too direct a renunciation of country, family and all past training to form the substance of a viable PSYOP appeal in every

The scientifically planned survey is an important tool in providing data and material for the answers to PSYOP EEI and in testing the contents of PSYOP communications. It is important, however, that the surveys be programed for the widest variety of urban rural targets.

It is apparent that use of sampling procedures and implementation of attitude or opinion polls requires demographic data and professional skills. It is beyond the scope of this essay to consider the tools of field research and the specific techniques of the sample survey.

The Panel as a Survey Tool

The panel is a group of people chosen to represent in a scientific way some larger population segment. The difference between the panel as a testing or measuring instrument and the survey is that the panel involves interviewing the same population segment not just once but repeatedly at regular intervals.

This technique allows for the gathering of a great amount of relevant data, and provides for a better comparison of long-run and short-run effects on attitudes and behavior. The validity of the results is highly dependent on the scientific selection of the panel to insure that it represents a demographic cross section of the target or targets. 13 For example, the requirement might be for a series of panels that scientifically represents the major social groups and subgroups. These could include separate panels for communication directed to urban civilians, rural civilians, enemy military and paramilitary forces, refugees, and the like.

The survey method of data collection requires free access to the audience, with the members being checked for psychological representativeness. That is, are they the best and most recent sample available to represent the psychological environment of the target audience? It also requires skilled handling of what is called the "interviewer effect," that is, biases introduced into the responses of the panel members as a result of their repeated interviewing and consequent heightened awareness of the issues.

The In-depth Interview

An important technique used to obtain PSYOP intelligence, the indepth interview is primarily used for post-testing and measuring attitude change and effect. Essentially, the in-depth interview is an outgrowth of the psychoanalytic interview, but is somewhat more directive, and of course not therapeutic in its aim.

During World War II, Dr. Henry V. Dicks (LTC, Royal British Medical Corps) was the first military psychiatrist to use in-depth interviews to support PSYOP programs. As in the psychoanalytic interview, the objective is to put the respondent at ease and get him to express himself as freely as possible on the subject at hand. If the interview is to progress satisfactorily, the psychological atmosphere must be permissive, and the respondent must be made to feel that nothing he says will be "used against him" or embarrass him in any way.

The purpose of the in-depth interview is to give insights into the deeper meanings that some objects and events hold for the respondent and to clarify the psychological process and mechanisms by which these meanings are formed, perpetuated, and changed. In order to gain insights of this kind from the in-depth interview, the interviewer must possess considerable psychological sophistication as well as a good grounding in the principles of modern dynamic psychology. Clumsy and aimless indepth interviewing produces nothing, and its indiscriminate application by amateurs can result in more confusion than insight.

Informal Media Testing

The testing techniques discussed, to this point, are very sophisticated and require technical knowledge in both the planning and implementation of their use. Surveys and in-depth interviews should be methodically planned and tested prior to implementation. This takes time-something often lacking to a PSYOP programmer. Often an immediate test or evaluation of a leaflet or other item of communication is required. Therefore, if operational pressures do not permit the use of the formal techniques discussed above, the PSYOP programmer might elect to test the communication informally on:

Members of his local national staff, or

An accidental urban or rural sample, or

An accidental sample of prisoners or returness, or on all three

At times, informal testing or evaluation is accomplished after a leaflet is printed and distributed.

One respondent, a 22-year-old former Viet Cong and teacher of "politics, culture, and indoctrination," made the following significant comments concerning PSYOP leaflets:

I propose that you use suitable terms in preparation of leaflets. It is natural that both sides try to abuse each other but we must speak ill of our opponent in an elegant manner. The picture must adhere to the truth because the readers will compare them with reality. If they find out that the leaflets are excessive, they will lose confidence. Most of the men from North Vietnam have a good culture and their general education level is equivalent to Junior High School, therefore, they can make a clear cut observation and analysis. Thus special attention must be paid to the text as well as to the pictures in the leaflet and efforts made to adhere to the truth as far as possible. 14

This kind of feedback, obtained during an interrogation or interview, is useful to PSYOP media programmers. As noted before, however, it must be considered together with other data. 15

Measuring the Effects of Communication

Variables

Measuring the effects of PSYOP communication is, of course, primarily of interest to commanders, planners, and communicators. The effect of communication is directly related to its purpose. It is difficult to learn the effect of persuasive communications, especially about targets in hostile areas, because, apart from the question of audience accessibility, media

effects are so diffuse and so variable in character that they defy simple analysis or uniform description. A complete inventory of the prerequisites needed to measure effects of PSYOP programs is yet to be formulated. In this regard, de Grazia presents some idea of the complexity:

responses to communications may be specific or general in nature; they may be of short or long duration; they may be of high or low intensity. In some instances a communication may produce a significant change in attitude with no accompanying change in observable behavior. In other instances, behavior appears to change markedly without any appreciable change in attitudes. Some intended effects may be produced in some people by carefully planned messages. In other audiences, the same messages may produce precisely opposite effects, or no effects at all. In short, the question that is of most interest to the psychological warfare operator, namely, that as to the target's intellectual and emotional responses to his messages, is still largely unanswered by students of the human sciences. 16 (Emphasis added.)

Although assessment is difficult, the data-gathering techniques and procedures discussed in the previous paragraphs are relevant in discovering whether communication media stimulated behavior or had a measurable effect on restructuring attitudes. As stated previously, it is important to consider attitudes as gradients or points along a continuous scale. In analyzing the effect of PSYOP communication and strategy, there are many considerations. A partial list of the variables includes: a. The type and location of the target

b. The number and variety of channels open to the target

c. The degree of program saturation over the various channels. (It is apparent that a PSYOP campaign that is given unlimited media support and money is likely to have greater impact than a limited effort.)

d. The degree to which the messages conform to group standards. The techniques discussed in regard to target analysis and communication testing are applicable in measuring the effect of PSYOP programs. Where possible, a combination of data-gathering techniques should be employed. Some social psychologists profess that it is rarely possible to predict action behavior from "paper and pencil" (survey) responses. However, Samuel Flowerman maintains that:

since all measurements, even in the physical sciences, are indirect measurements, we commit no violence to scientific method by urging additional criteria for estimating effectiveness of protolerance propaganda. ... (Perhaps effectiveness in social psychology is like infinity in mathematics; we may approach it but never attain it. Yet this does not stop us from making progress.).... We can accept as evidence the satisfaction of a reasonable number and kinds of criteria of effectiveness. Such reasoning would also enable us to make better comparisons between two different sets of propaganda symbols."

Criteria of Effectiveness

Six indicators of the effectiveness of PSYOP will be discussed.

1. Immediate Recall. Other things being equal, the content of messages that are immediately recalled is more effective than that of messages that are not recalled (forgotten).

However, it appears that unfavorable messages as well as highly favorable messages are liable to be remembered.