Some Pragmatic Issues of Measurement

摘要

Measurement is the cornerstone of Human Factors (HF) research and testing. Tofacilitate discussions in this paper HF testing will be treated as a special case of HF research in that testing uses many of the same methods and measurements. HF research is applied research which means the results are always expected to have a use. This does not mean that the results are necessarily unrelated to theory evaluation. This simply means that the sponsor and user have the right to know what the utility and limitations of the results are in relation to the specific problems or questions posed prior to the research. This, in turn, determines the selection and/or development of measures to be used in research and testing. This gives rise to a number of pragmatic issues for research in general and measurement in particular. The topics in this paper are somewhat diversified. First, some of the potential users will be identified along with their needs in respect to HF research and testing. This will be followed by a discussion of some pragmatic issues and end with a suggested approach for evaluating crew's contribution to system performance.