FFIs prediksjonsturnering - spørsmålskatalog

This report documents all of the 240 questions that were asked during FFI’s prediction tournament (2017–2020). The purpose of the tournament was to measure individual variations in forecasting ability on questions of relevance to Norwegian national security and defence policy. Participants included national security professionals, researchers, officers and interested amateurs.

The purpose of this report is to describe and analyse the types of questions posed, their topics and time perspectives, as well as the background information and response options participants were given. All questions were falsifiable, i.e. they had to be formulated in a way that made it possible to determine whether the event or development participants were asked to predict, actually occurred or not. Thus, all questions had mutually exclusive response options, clearly defined criteria and a specified point in time at which the question would be resolved. Respondents were asked to provide a probabilistic estimate (in percentages) for each possible outcome.

The average time perspective of all questions was 521 days (around 1.5 year). The most common topics were armed conflicts and military operations, Russia, Europe, the US and economics. This selection reflects the most important topics to Norwegian national security and defence planning. One third of the questions were binary (yes/no), while the rest had at least three possible outcomes. On average, the question had 3.5 response options each.

Of the 240 questions, 150 were resolved by the end of 2020. The answers to these questions are included in this report. Remaining questions will be resolved in the years to come.