EAGER: Foundations for Combining Normative and Behavioral Research Methodologies to Study Systems Engineering

EAGER：结合规范和行为研究方法来研究系统工程的基础

• 批准号: 1346553
• 负责人: Daniel McAdams
• 金额: $ 10万
• 依托单位: Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-09-01 至 2017-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1346553&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; Foundations; Combining; Normative; Behavioral

The research objective of this EArly-Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project is to demonstrate the feasibility of using web-enabled serious games to conduct controlled experiments for answering questions about decision making in systems engineering projects. A serious game is a game used for purposes other than entertainment, such as a flight simulator for training pilots. The research will leverage established techniques from the behavioral sciences to determine whether subjects in the gaming intervention behave, on average, the same as those given a traditional text-based survey. The investigation will focus on the sunk cost phenomenon in the context of a satellite engineering project as a study scenario. The sunk cost phenomenon has been widely studied in the behavioral sciences community, so it provides a solid frame of reference for this investigation. A web-enabled framework for game-based experimentation will be created to support this research. If successful, this research will have a significant impact on systems engineering research. The need for research on systems engineering methods is apparent: many of the largest systems engineering projects incur significant delays, cost overruns, and often fail to meet stated performance objectives. However, to date the systems engineering research community lacks a framework for controlled experimentation for evaluating proposed methods. This limits research progress and impedes new method adoption. The game-based approach investigated in this research can serve this role. This research also will contribute new evidence about the sunk cost effect in engineering decision making. Prior studies of sunk cost have not focused on engineers or engineering decisions, so this new data can provide important insight into one problem that potentially plagues engineering projects.

该早期探索性研究资助 (EAGER) 项目的研究目标是证明使用网络严肃游戏进行受控实验以回答系统工程项目决策问题的可行性。严肃游戏是指用于娱乐以外目的的游戏，例如用于训练飞行员的飞行模拟器。该研究将利用行为科学的现有技术来确定游戏干预中的受试者的平均行为是否与传统的基于文本的调查的受试者相同。该调查将重点关注以卫星工程项目为研究场景的沉没成本现象。沉没成本现象在行为科学界得到了广泛的研究，因此它为本研究提供了坚实的参考框架。将创建一个用于基于游戏的实验的网络框架来支持这项研究。如果成功，这项研究将对系统工程研究产生重大影响。对系统工程方法进行研究的必要性是显而易见的：许多最大的系统工程项目都会出现严重的延误、成本超支，并且常常无法达到规定的性能目标。然而，迄今为止，系统工程研究界缺乏用于评估所提出方法的受控实验框架。这限制了研究进展并阻碍了新方法的采用。本研究中研究的基于游戏的方法可以发挥这一作用。这项研究还将为工程决策中的沉没成本效应提供新的证据。先前对沉没成本的研究并未关注工程师或工程决策，因此这一新数据可以为可能困扰工程项目的一个问题提供重要的见解。