Source Evaluation Test & Training

How it works

Each case presents a fictional field report, source history, reporting chain, document, or analytical problem. Choose the judgment that a careful intelligence analyst could defend from the evidence given.

What it tests and trains

• Access & Competence: whether a source is positioned and qualified to know the specific fact being reported.
• Source Chains: tracing information through sub-sources and recognizing when reliability weakens at an unvetted link.
• Motivation: identifying incentives, payments, factional interests, and pressures that may distort reporting.
• Corroboration: deciding whether supporting evidence is genuinely independent and specific to the claim.
• Deception: recognizing fabricators, controlled sources, staged activity, planted material, and accurate low-value reporting used to build trust.
• Reliability & Grading: separating source reliability from information credibility and calibrating weight to the reporting record.
• Provenance: tracing documents and reports to their real origins, including circular and derivative reporting.
• Analytic Judgment: handling currency, assumptions, base rates, disconfirming evidence, collection gaps, physical constraints, and confidence.

Modes

Test mode withholds correctness and multiple-choice tradecraft labels while you work. Direct-grading cases identify the grading task because you must assign Source Reliability and Information Credibility directly. With Confidence Rating enabled, each judgment is followed by a 25%, 50%, 75%, 90%, or Certain confidence choice before the next case. Training mode names the skill being practiced and explains the correct judgment after every answer.

Case levels

Field Officer emphasizes basic and intermediate source-evaluation problems. Station Chief uses Applied cases in Quick sessions and mixes the full range in Standard, Full, and focused sessions. Director emphasizes intermediate and advanced cases with subtler tradeoffs, deception risks, and analytical caveats.

Optional case timer

Advanced Settings can add a 30-, 60-, or 90-second limit to each case. The case timer uses active decision time, so it stops while the session is paused or the tab is hidden.

Developing case files

Some sessions contain a three-stage case file. New corroboration, source history, or provenance arrives between stages and you must reassess the same developing file through its final judgment rather than treating every question as isolated.

Reliability and credibility grades

Some grading cases replace multiple choice with two direct selectors. Assign the source an A–F reliability grade and the information a 1–6 credibility grade. The two judgments are separate: a source can have a strong reporting record while passing on a weak rumor, and an untested source can sometimes provide information that is independently confirmed.

Scoring

Overall Accuracy is the percentage of cases answered correctly. Balanced sessions give all eight source-evaluation skills equal weight. When Test-mode confidence ratings are enabled, results also show confidence calibration, over- or underconfidence, and accuracy on judgments rated 90% or Certain. Average Decision Time uses active question time only; confidence-rating time, paused time, and time away from the tab are excluded.

Focused Training

After a session, each skill row has a Train button. It launches an eight-case Training session focused on that source-evaluation skill at the currently selected case level.

Session sizes

Quick uses 16 cases, Standard uses 24, and Full uses 32, giving each of the eight skills 2, 3, or 4 cases respectively.

Keyboard controls

Press 1–4 to answer multiple-choice cases. During a Test-mode confidence prompt, 1–5 select 25%, 50%, 75%, 90%, or Certain. For direct grading, choose both grades, Tab to Submit Grade, and press Enter. Enter continues after Training feedback. P pauses or resumes, and Escape ends the session.