Test 1, Research Methods Flashcards
What is ergonomics?
The study of designing equipment and devices that fit the human body, its movements, and its cognitive abilities. Derived from the Greek words ergon (work) and nomos (natural laws).
What is Human Factors?
The science of understanding the properties of human capability and applying this understanding to the design, development, and deployment of systems and services.
What is a human factor?
A human factor is a physical or cognitive property of an individual that influences functioning of technological systems as well as human-environment equilibriums.
What is an affordance?
Quality of an object, or an environment, that allows an individual to perform an action.
James J. Gibson coined the term in 1977 to describe the idea that certain things look as if you’re supposed to use them in a certain way
Goals of Science
Description, Prediction, Explanation/Understanding. Achieved by collecting data to build a theory. Theory provides the best explanation for the findings in the research.
Measurement
Defines a domain of interest (usually human performance within a system).
Defines the conditions under which we can make useful measurements
What are variables?
They are anything that can vary or differ
Can be an event, situation, behavior, or individual characteristic
We have to define our variables before we begin our research
What is an operational definition of a variable?
A definition of the variable in terms of the operations or techniques the researcher uses in order to measure or manipulate it.
What is an independent variable?
The variables that are manipulated or chosen by the researcher.
Example 1: You are interested in how stress affects terrain learning in a military training exercise. You directly manipulate stress in your human subjects and measure how it affects learning.
What is a dependent variable?
The variables that are measured by the researcher (in other words, the variables you want to know). They “depend” on the independent variable because you set up your experiment with the prediction that the dependent variable(s) will change based on the independent variable(s).
Construct validity
does the measure that is employed actually measure the construct it is intended to measure?
Internal validity
can the relations observed can be attributed with a high degree of confidence to the variables of interest? i.e., the ability to draw conclusions about causal relationships from our data.
External validity
can the results or the principles derived from the results can be generalized to a variety of other settings?
Ecological validity
do the behaviors observed in the study reflect the behaviors that actually occur in a natural setting?
What are descriptive reseach methods?
When you want to examine a situation that cannot be replicated
You are unable to exercise any control over the events under the investigation
Control can lead to a loss of ecological and external validity
Using sources like Archival Data to obtain information about a system
Archival data is data obtained from preexisting data collections like the census.
Surveys and Questionnaires
The best way to begin addressing a problem by asking people in the natural environment
What are the steps to a good questionaire?
Decide on the information you want the questionnaire to provide
Decide what type of questionnaire should be used
If you decide to write your own questionnaire, the third step is to write a first draft
Revise questionnaire
Pretest the questionnaire
Finalize the questionnaire
What is correlational research?
measure the strength of a relationship between two or more variables.
What is differential research?
observe two or more groups that are differentiated on the basis of some preexisting variable.
What are experimental research methods?
Defining features:
Test a hypothesis that makes a causal statement about the relation among variables
Compare a dependent measure at at least two levels of an independent variable
Randomly assign people to experimental conditions to make sure that the effects of many potentially confounding factors are distributed equally across conditions.
Design involves:
Designing new products
Modifying existing products
Designing environments
Safety
Develop training programs or instruction manuals
Organizational development and restructuring
What are 7 principles for transforming difficult tasks into simple ones:
Knowledge in the World + Head Simplify the Structure of Tasks Make Things Visible Get the Mapping Right Exploit the Power of Constraints Design for Error Standardize
What is feedback?
When a user interacts with a system, the system should provide information that the interaction was successful or an error was made.
What is the gulf of execution?
The gap between the user’s goal of action and the means to execute that goal.
What is the gulf of evaluation?
The degree to which the system provides representations that can be directly perceived and interpreted in terms of the expectations and intentions of the user.
What is response compatability?
Movement of control should match outcome goal
When you turn the steering wheel left, the car should turn left.
Task anaylsis should include:
Functions of system
More specific tasks to be performed
Concurrent activities
