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Presents a critical assessment of the role of quantitative tools and methods in the analysis of public policy issues. The paper focuses on the limitations of quantitative methodology as a tool for the analysis of soft and "squishy" problems and on the distortions that result when those limitations are neglected. This assessment is followed by a preliminary attempt to outline a theory of judgmental analysis intended to explore the difficulties more fully and suggest directions for their resolution. The examples used as illustrations are drawn largely from military and defense applications; however, the issues addressed arise equally strongly in the analysis on nondefense problems, and the assessment presented in this paper is intended to apply to both.
This report is part of the RAND Corporation Paper series. The paper was a product of the RAND Corporation from 1948 to 2003 that captured speeches, memorials, and derivative research, usually prepared on authors' own time and meant to be the scholarly or scientific contribution of individual authors to their professional fields. Papers were less formal than reports and did not require rigorous peer review.
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