On the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Research Branch of the Information and Education Division of the War Department conducted the first in a series of large-scale surveys of personnel in the United States armed forces. In the words of project staff director Samuel A. Stouffer, the purpose of the project was to provide the army command quickly and accurately with facts about the attitudes of soldiers which might be helpful in policy formation. By the end of World War II, more than half a million soldiers had been interviewed on such subjects as: their feelings toward the army, their living conditions and entertainment, their attitudes toward the enemy and the war, their mental health, American soldiers in World War II, their actual combat experiences, and many others.
