BAA Sources Sought Notice_RORA_6_2_4 JAN 23.pdf

Ver. 20DEC2016

W911NF-18-S-0005-FY2023

SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE

REQUEST FOR WHITE PAPERS

BAA TOPIC A-8. b.3: ASSESSING AND IMPROVING LEADER SKILLS

“Reactive, Open-Response Assessments of Leader Competencies: Context Modulation and Feedback”

INTRODUCTION

Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) W911NF-18-S-0005 was publicized on FedBizOpps and Grants.gov on 1 May 2018. This Sources Sought Notice calls for White Paper submissions in reference to the BAA Topic A-8. b.3: ASSESSING AND IMPROVING LEADER SKILLS. The United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI) Broad Agency announcement W911NF-18-S-0005, issued under the provisions of paragraph 6.102(d)(2) of the Federal Acquisition Regulation, provides for the competitive selection of basic and applied research and that part of development not related to the development of a specific system or hardware procurement. A Proposal submitted in response to this BAA and selected for award is considered to be the result of full and open competition and in full compliance with the provisions of Public Law 98-369, “The Competition in Contracting Act of 1984," and subsequent amendments. Funding of research and development (R&D) within ARI areas of interest will be determined by funding constraints and priorities set during each budget cycle. Any award related to the submission of a White Paper and subsequent Proposal requested by this Notice is subject to funds availability and priorities. ARI may choose not to select any new award due to unavailability of funds or other factors.

The sequence of steps leading to an award is:

1) Request for White Paper initiated by ARI through this Sources Sought Notice

2) Submission of a timely White Paper no more than five pages in length to the POC for the U.S.

Army Contracting Command, wilveria.a.sanders.civ@army.mil, and copy furnish (CC) the ARI Technical Point of Contact (TPOC), randy.j.brou.civ@army.mil.

3) Written or telephonic feedback provided to the Offeror regarding the White Paper’s scientific merit and potential contributions to the Army mission as per established criteria presented in Part

III

4) If the White Paper merits it, a request of a formal proposal initiated by ARI

5) Submission of a timely, formal proposal

6) Evaluation of the formal proposal as per established criteria presented in Part III

7) Award for selected proposal based on availability of funds or other factors mailto:wilveria.a.sanders.civ@army.mil

This sequence allows earliest determination of the potential for funding and minimizes the labor and cost associated with submission of a full proposal that has minimal probability of being selected for funding.

Note that an interested Offeror must submit a White Paper electronically in order to be eligible to submit a formal proposal under this Notice. This Notice requires that a White Paper be submitted electronically no later than 6 February 2023, 5:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time. See Part V, Deadlines, for additional details. BAA W911NF-18-S-0005 allows several potential instrument types (e.g., contract, grant, cooperative agreement) to result from a successful proposal. For this Notice, the intention of the Government is to award a contract.

THOSE SUBMITTING A WHITE PAPER/PROPOSAL ARE CAUTIONED THAT ONLY A

GOVERNMENT CONTRACTING OR GRANTS OFFICER CAN OBLIGATE THE GOVERNMENT

THROUGH AWARD OF A LEGAL INSTRUMENT INVOLVING EXPENDITURE OF

GOVERNMENT FUNDS.

This Sources Sought Notice for a Requested White Paper consists of seven parts as follows:

• Part I: Research and Development Interests of the Requested White Paper

• Part II: Preparation and Submission

• Part III: Evaluation Criteria

• Part IV: Feedback

• Part V: Deadlines

• Part VI: Inquiries

• Part VII: References

ACC (APG) RTP Agency Point of Contact:

The POC for the US Army Contracting Command (Aberdeen Proving Ground) Research Triangle Park Division is: Ms. Wilveria Sanders, (919) 549-4328, wilveria.a.sanders.civ@army.mil.

ARI Agency Point of Contact:

The ARI POC for technical matters for this White Paper topic is: Dr. Randy Brou, (706) 575-8264, randy.j.brou@army.mil.

I. RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT INTERESTS OF THE REQUESTED WHITE PAPER:

The United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences is the Army’s lead agency for the conduct of research, development, and analyses for Army readiness and performance via research advances and applications of the behavioral and social sciences that address personnel, organization, training, and leader development issues. ARI contracts with educational institutions, non-profit organizations, and private industry for research and development (R&D) in different areas, including the areas specifically identified in Paragraph 8 of W911NF-18-S-0005. Efforts funded under this White Paper request will only include Applied Research and/or Advanced Technology Development.

mailto:randy.j.brou@army.mil

Applied Research provides a systematic expansion and application of knowledge to design and develop useful strategies, techniques, methods, tests, or measures that provide the means to meet a recognized and specific Army need. Applied Research precedes system specific technology investigations or development, but it should have a high potential to transition into the Advanced Technology Development (ATD) Program.

The ARI ATD Program includes the development of technologies, components, or prototypes that can be tested in field experiments and/or simulated environments. Projects in this category have a direct relevance to identified military needs. These projects should demonstrate the general military utility or cost reduction potential of technology in the areas of personnel selection, assignment, and retention;

training strategies and techniques; leader education and development; performance measurement; and team and inter-organizational mission effectiveness. These projects should be focused on a more direct operational benefit and if successful, the technology should be available for transition.

WHITE PAPER TOPIC: Reactive, Open-Response Assessments of Leader Competencies: Context Modulation and Feedback

Junior Officers (JOs) must develop leader competencies to overcome the challenges they will face during their assignments, but opportunities for realistically practicing those competencies and being provided feedback on how to improve are infrequent during their early professional military education (PME) courses. The throughput of PME courses is far too high to allow for repeated practice opportunities (as would be the cost of extending PME to increase the opportunities), and thus, the number of those opportunities and the breadth of contexts which they can cover are extremely limited. Given the range of contexts that JOs must face during their careers, it would be beneficial to identify the strengths and weaknesses they possess within their profile of competencies and to provide them with feedback on the types of contexts for which they will need extra preparation. In order to provide JOs with the additional practice opportunities and feedback they need, the Army needs a method for replicating leadership challenges that can be conducted despite the level of throughput in PME courses.

To address this need, the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI) is pursuing advancements in the automated assessment of JO interpersonal leader competencies. Current approaches in assessing interpersonal leader competencies are limited in a variety of ways (Donaldson & Grant-Vallone, 2002; Klehe, et al., 2012; Nederhof, 1985). Some approaches rely on self-report measures which can be subject to response bias and limitations of individuals’ frames of reference. Other approaches require live observations of task completion which can be resource intensive and limit repeated measurement opportunities. In early attempts to overcome these limitations, ARI developed “reactive, open-response assessments” (RORAs) which presented JOs with computer-based, interactive scenarios requiring them to converse with virtual characters through unprompted and unguided free-text inputs (Brou, Stallings, Normand, Stearns, & Ledford, 2018).

The RORA scenarios used to date represent situations in which interpersonal leadership competencies (e.g., “building trust”) must be effectively demonstrated to guide the interactions towards a positive end-state. The scenarios unfold based on how unprompted free-text inputs from JOs are interpreted by natural language processing algorithms during real-time interactions with virtual characters. The unprompted and unguided nature of the JOs’ responses seem to elicit more authentic inputs than what might be gleaned from a multiple-choice-driven system. However, the unfolding of the scenarios is limited by the fact that there are, at any point, only a handful of branches available for selection by the algorithms.

While these branches represent a majority of the options JOs might realistically pursue given the situations presented, the branch-based structure of the RORA scenarios both limit the ability of the JOs to adapt their behavior as the situations unfold and our ability to accurately assess these changes over time in their decision-making processes regarding how to best interact with the virtual characters. Said another way, in real situations JOs might take some time to “read the room” and modulate their interpersonal tactics accordingly as elements of the situation evolve or become more apparent. Context matters when deciding how to employ one’s competencies (Rauthmann et al., 2014) and part of the context in interpersonal leadership situations is how others react (or even begin to react) during initial interactions.

The current RORA scenarios do not offer much room to maneuver in such an interpersonal space. Thus, one goal of the proposed research is to improve on the current RORA tool by designing methods for allowing more conversational interactions with virtual characters. Such conversational interactions might include ways to convey the emotional reactions of characters to statements that are made and to allow for JOs to expand upon or change their inputs in response to those new contextual data points.

One potential approach to this requirement might be to bound an interaction in a known professional setting such as a counseling session in which a JO has to provide both positive and negative feedback to a member of his/her unit. The goal could be to motivate the member to address areas of weakness without making them overly angry, depressed, etc. JOs might decide to focus on positive and negative behaviors in a strategic order to balance the emotional reaction of the member. The ability to measure the use of such strategic choices would provide another measure of leader competencies that current RORAs cannot provide. Further, it would be possible to manipulate the difficulty of the scenario by changing the tendencies of the virtual unit member (Zayas et al., 2019). A virtual unit member who takes feedback well and is eager to please could be very different than a member who feels they have been mistreated in the past or who tends to become insulted easily. The RORA tool would benefit greatly from a systematic way to adjust situational difficulty by adjusting such parameters given the past performance of a given

JO.

Along with an enhanced ability to modulate contextual elements, RORAs would benefit from improvements in their ability to provide automated feedback based on differences in performance (Nesbit, 2012). Thus, a second focus of the requested research is to identify feedback techniques that can account for variations in performance across the range of scenarios a JO might complete during an assessment session. If virtual members were categorized by the traits they possessed, it might be possible to provide specific feedback to JOs regarding the types of individuals for whom their current leadership strategies are least effective, and what self-development information and methods they might pursue to improve in those cases.

White papers should describe research to address the identification and systematic manipulation of contextual features of importance for interpersonal leader competencies as well as methods/techniques to provide feedback based on competency-relevant behaviors across scenarios. Selection of white papers for full proposal will be based on the originality of the proposed approach, methodological rigor, feasibility of the proposed approach, indicated knowledge and experience in conducting applied research in military contexts, and depth of relevant military and technical subject matter expertise of the proposed team members staffing the research project. The research team should include researchers with expertise in cognitive psychology, social psychology, industrial/organizational psychology, or related fields, and in natural language processing/generation.

The award will be approximately a 36-month period of performance (12-month base [FY23 NTE $225,000] with two 12-month option years, respectively, Option Year 1 [NTE $175,000] and Option Year 2 [NTE $150,000]) with a total budget not to exceed $550,000.

The Army Contracting Command- Aberdeen Proving Ground, RTP Division has the authority to award a variety of instruments, to include contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements. The ACC (APG) RTP Division reserves the right to use the type of instrument most appropriate for the effort proposed.

II. PREPARATION AND SUBMISSION OF A WHITE PAPER:

Preparation of White Paper

A White Paper should focus on describing details of the proposed research for both the base and option approach, including how it is innovative and how it could substantially advance the state of the science.

Army relevance and potential impact should also be described, as well as an estimate of total cost for both the base and option approach. White Papers should present the effort in sufficient detail to allow evaluation of the concept's technical merit and its potential contributions to the Army mission.

A White Paper must be limited to five (5) pages plus the cover page and an addendum in which the Offeror must include a biographical sketch (up to 300 words per individual) of all key personnel (i.e., Principal Investigators and Co-Principal Investigators) who will perform the research, highlighting their qualifications and experience as discussed below. All files and forms must be compiled into a single PDF file or MS Word document before submitting. Reviewers will be advised that they are only to review the cover page and up to five pages plus the addendum. Any pages submitted in excess of the five (5) page limit will not be reviewed or evaluated.

TECHNICAL INFORMATION FOR A WHITE PAPERS:

1. Technical Approach: A detailed discussion of the effort's scientific research objectives, approach, relationship to similar research, level of effort, and estimated total cost; include the nature and extent of the anticipated results, and if known, the manner in which the work will contribute to the accomplishment of the Army's mission related to this request and how this would be demonstrated.

2. Requests for Government Support: The type of support, if any that the Offeror requests of the Government (such as facilities, equipment, demonstration sites, test ranges, software, personnel or materials) shall be identified as Government Furnished Equipment (GFE), Government Furnished Information (GFI), Government Furnished Property (GFP), or Government Furnished Data (GFD). Offeror shall indicate any Government coordination that may be required for obtaining equipment or facilities necessary to perform any simulations or exercises that would demonstrate the proposed capability.

3. Key Personnel Biographical Information: As an addendum to the White Paper, the Offeror must include a biographical sketch (up to 300 words per individual) of all key personnel (i.e., Principal Investigators and Co-Principal Investigators) who will perform the research, highlighting their qualifications and experience.

RESTRICTIVE MARKINGS ON WHITE PAPERS:

1. The Offeror must identify any proprietary data the Offeror intends to be used only by the Government. The Offeror must also identify any technical data or computer software contained in the White Paper that is to be treated by the Government as limited rights or restricted rights respectively. In the absence of such identification, the Government will assume to have unlimited rights to all technical data or computer software presented in the White Paper. Records or data bearing a restrictive legend may be included in the White Paper, but must be clearly marked. It is the intent of the Army to treat all White Papers as procurement sensitive information before the award and to disclose their contents only to Government employees or designated support contractors for the purpose of procurement related activities only. Classified, sensitive, or critical information on technologies should not be included in a White Paper.

2. An Offeror is cautioned that portions of White Papers may be subject to release under terms of the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. 552, as amended.

Submission of White Paper

White Papers must be submitted by e-mail to the POC for the U.S. Army Contracting Command, wilveria.a.sanders.civ@army.mil, and cc’d to the ARI Point of Contact (POC), randy.j.brou.civ@army.mil, in electronic MS Word document format or PDF file format. Cite “ARI BAA W911NF-18-S-0005Y, Reactive, Open-Response Assessments of Leader Competencies:

Context Modulation and Feedback” in the e-mail subject line.

III. EVALUATION CRITERIA:

A White Papers and full Proposals received in response to this request will be evaluated by the ARI designated point of contact identified in this request using the following factors/criteria:

1. Overall scientific and/or technical merits of the proposed research: The Offeror must demonstrate a thorough understanding of the research problem and articulate a clear approach to addressing the research objectives. The proposed approach must be based on feasible and realistic scientific methods and provide the Government with a high level of confidence of successful completion within proposed timeline.

2. Potential contributions of the effort to the U.S. Army Research Institute’s mission: In addition to showing how the proposed research aligns with the solicited topic, the Offeror must also specify how the proposed research will contribute to or advance the current U.S. Army Research Institute’s behavioral and social science research mission.

3. The Offeror’s capabilities, related experience, facilities, techniques or unique combination of these which are integral factors for achieving the proposed research objectives: the Offeror must demonstrate relevant organizational capabilities [e.g., experience, facilities, techniques] beyond individual capability to ensure the proposed research objectives can be achieved by the organization as a whole.

4. The qualifications, capabilities, and experience of the proposed Principal Investigator and other key personnel who are critical to the achievement of the proposed research objectives: The Offeror must demonstrate that the key personnel have the education and experience necessary to successfully complete the research objectives. Personnel capabilities need to be aligned with the expertise needed to achieve the required research objectives.

5. The Offeror’s record of past performance: Past performance information obtained from the Offeror’s White Paper, centralized past performance databases, and other sources will be used to evaluate past performance on projects of similar size, scope, and complexity to determine timely compliance with Government specifications. For an Offeror with no relevant past performance, the Government may take into account information regarding the past performance of predecessor companies, subcontractors, or proposed personnel that will perform key aspects of the proposed research.

6. Realism, affordability, and appropriateness of proposed costs: The Offeror must demonstrate that the proposed costs are appropriate given the suggested research approach. The Government will also evaluate the proposed costs in relation to the scope of the research objectives and the U.S. Army Research Institute’s budget.

7. Current and/or future relationship or interface with ongoing activities in academia and/or industry: The Offeror must demonstrate how the research findings and/or products could inform current or future scientific research, impact industry, and/or meet Army needs and goals.

The request for a proposal will be made based on the overall evaluation of a White Paper using the seven criteria listed above. The overall scientific and/or technical merit of the proposed approach will be weighted more strongly than all of the other factors combined. A request for proposal may not necessarily be made to the lowest proposed price. During the evaluation of White Papers, ARI’s POC for technical matters may request a discussion with an Offeror, but discussions are not guaranteed nor required for competition and award purposes. ARI’s POC for technical matters reserves the right to evaluate a White Paper and request a proposal without discussions The Offeror’s initial submission should contain the Offeror’s best terms from a technical and price standpoint. Once a full proposal has been requested, all communications must go through the POC for the U.S. Army Contracting Command.

If the White Paper evaluation results in the request and submission of a full proposal, the proposal will be evaluated by a panel of scientific peers using the same factors/criteria as those listed above under Evaluation Criteria. A request for a full proposal does not guarantee an award. The decision to award will be based on feedback from the panel, considerations presented by ARI’s POC for technical matters identified in this document, and other factors like budgetary constraints. ARI may choose not to select any award due to unavailability of funds or other factors.

IV. FEEDBACK:

Written or telephonic feedback will be provided to the Offeror regarding the White Paper’s scientific merit and potential contributions to the Army mission. If the Government decides to request a full proposal, a written request will be sent to the Offeror. The Written Request will, at a minimum, invite a full proposal. The request may also include feedback intended to improve the proposal’s potential for award.

V. DEADLINES:

Electronic versions of the White Paper must be received by the POC for the U.S. Army Contracting Command and the ARI POC, with e-mail subject line “ARI BAA W911NF-18-S-0005Y, Reactive, Open-Response Assessments of Leader Competencies: Context Modulation and Feedback” by e-mail no later than 5:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time on 6 February 2023. Any extension to the White Paper submission deadline will be posted to FedBizOpps as an amendment to this Notice. Note that a timely White Paper received under this Notice will be evaluated and considered for proposal requests throughout the period beginning 6 February 2023 and ending 29 April 2023. An extension of this timeline may be granted based on the number of White Papers submitted or other factors out of the control of the designated point of contact reviewing the White Papers. An Offeror will be notified by email if the White Paper evaluation timeline is extended beyond 29 April 2023.

Instructions for the submission of a full Proposal will be provided by the U.S. Army Contracting Command to an Offeror invited to submit based on the evaluation of their White Paper.

An Offeror is responsible for submitting an electronic White Paper or full proposal so as to be received and accepted at the Government site indicated in this Notice no later than the date and time specified above. When sending electronic files, an Offeror shall account for potential delays in file transfer from the originator’s computer to the Government website/computer server. An Offeror is encouraged to submit their response early to avoid potential file transfer delays due to high demand or problems encountered in the course of submission.

An Offeror should receive confirmation of delivery at the Government site, not just successful relay from the Offeror’s system. Acceptable evidence to establish the time of receipt at the Government site includes documentary and electronic evidence of receipt maintained by the Government site. All submissions shall be submitted before the deadline identified above in order to be considered – no exceptions.

If an emergency or unanticipated event interrupts normal Government processes so that a White Paper or full proposal cannot be received at the site designated for receipt by the date and time specified above, then the date and time specified for receipt will be deemed to be extended to the same day and time specified in this Notice on the first work day on which normal Government processes resume.

An Offeror agrees to hold the terms of their White Paper and any subsequent proposal valid for 180 calendar days from the date of submission.

VI. INQUIRIES:

ACC (APG) RTP Agency Point of Contact (Contractual Questions)

The POC for the US Army Contracting Command (Aberdeen Proving Ground) Research Triangle Park Division is: Ms. Wilveria Sanders, (919) 549-4328, wilveria.a.sanders.civ@army.mil.

ARI Agency Point of Contact (Technical Questions)

The ARI POC for technical matters for this White Paper topic is: Dr. Randy Brou, (706) 575-8264, randy.j.brou.civ@army.mil.

VII. REFERENCES:

Brou, R., Stallings, G., Stearns, I., Normand, S., & Ledford, B. (2018). Building Automated Assessments of Interpersonal Leadership Skills. Paper presented at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC), Orlando, FL.

Donaldson, S. I., & Grant-Vallone, E. J. (2002). Understanding Self-Report Bias in Organizational Behavior Research. Journal of Business and Psychology, 17(2), 245-262.

Klehe, U., Kleinmann, M., Hartstein, T., Melchers, K., Knig, C., Heslin, P., & Lievens, F. (2012).

Responding to Personality Tests in a Selection Context: The Role of the Ability to Identify Criteria and the Ideal-Employee Factor, Human Performance, 25:4, 273-302.

Nederhof, A. (1985). Methods of Coping with Social Desirability Bias: A Review. European Journal of Social Psychology, 15, 263-280.

mailto:randy.j.brou.civ@army.mil

Nesbit, P. L. (2012). The Role of Self-Reflection, Emotional Management of Feedback, and Self- Regulation Processes in Self-Directed Leadership Development. Human Resource Development Review, 11(2), 203-226.

Rauthmann, J. F., Gallardo-Pujol, D., Guillaume, E. M., Todd, E., Nave, C. S., Sherman, R. A., Ziegler, M., Jones, A. B., & Funder, D. C. (2014). The Situational Eight DIAMONDS: A Taxonomy of Major Dimensions of Situation Characteristics. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(4), 677-718.

Zayas, V., Sridharan, V., Lee, R., & Shoda, Y. (2019). Addressing Two Blind Spots of Commonly Used Experimental Designs: The Highly-Repeated Within-Person Approach. Social Personality Psychology Compass. 13(9). https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.1248716

The ARI POC for technical matters for this White Paper topic is: Dr. Randy Brou, (706) 575-8264, randy.j.brou.civ@army.mil.