Human Performance Measures Handbook Review

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(More customer reviews)This book was written to fill a definite need for applied human factors practitioners. Unfortunately, the frustrations outweigh the benefits. It does catalogue a number of measures, but fails to succeed in its aim. The text reads more like a stack of literature review notecards than a handbook or guide. At times, it hands out results without talking about what a given researcher was measuring or addressing. It is almost as if they published an expanded draft outline instead of the real book it was supposed to grow into.
It's title clearly states that it addresses Human Performance Measures. Liberally splashed in amongst the measures, however, are entry after entry of experimental tasks that present vague task results without talking about the measures used to determine those results. It does so without pointing out that these items are tasks, not measures. When it does address true measures, it offers no explanation of when that type of measure is appropriate, or even how to use it. Instead, in simple literature review fashion, it simply cites results of different journal articles.
This volume is completely hamstrung by the publisher formatting of the text. When you flip through the book, it appears to be a single, 188-page-long run-on paragraph. Reading a specific section reveals the same problem: headers and subheaders are barely (if at all) distinguishable from the text, which is of low to moderate value anyways.
It is a perfect example of an information flea market - There are a very few good bits of information in there, but you have to spend a whole lot of time digging around to find it. The topic was a great idea, but the execution was lacking. It just takes too much digging time for the potential payoff.

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Human Performance Measures Handbook was developed to help researchers and practitioners select measures to be used in the evaluation of human/machine systems and helps them seek better, more efficient and effective ways to characterize and measure the human element as part of the system. This book guides the reader through the critical process of selecting the appropriate measures of human performance and workload, and later provides specific examples of such. It begins with an overview of the steps involved in developing a test to measure human performance, workload, and/or situational awareness. This is followed by a definition of human performance and a review of human performance measures. Workload and situational awareness are similarly treated in subsequent chapters.

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Human Performance, Workload, and Situational Awareness Measures Handbook, Second Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)The last several years have seen a confluence between the fields of Human Factors Engineering, Engineering Psychology and Human Computer Interaction (HCI), this has co-occurred with the development of Systems Engineering techniques for the measurement and planning of human performance in closed loop man-machine systems (see Alphonse Chapanis's handbook on Human Factors in Systems Engineering). But the specific measurement of human performance factors in a variety of stressful environments is becoming increasingly important in a variety of domains (transportation, military, automated systems, and in the office worker/knowledge management environment). Without specific measures of what we mean, or need to experimentally evaluate in determining the performance, workload, awareness and stress of workers in these automated systems we are left without specific guidance in the design of safer, more effective and user-suitable work environments.
Dr. Gawron combines her academic and defense/aerospace expertise to provide a tightly organized summary of measures appropriate to human performance, workload, and situation awareness in a variety of environments. This handbook is developed in four well-researched and bibliographically documented chapters. The first offers a review of experimental methods and controls as they apply to human factors research and closed-loop complex systems. This is especially necessary for engineering users who may be less familiar with the tools and methods of experimental psychology. The second chapter begins with formal definition and domain-appropriate classification of human performance then proceeds to describe and document a taxonomy of experimental techniques and measures ranging from reaction time and error rate to highly specific cognitive performance tests and measures of air combat performance. The third defines measures for workload in both the physical and cognitive domains as they may be applied to a variety of stressful work environments. The final chapter describes and provides testable measures for the more recently defined field of situation awareness and describes how this otherwise ephemeral descriptor can be quantitatively and qualitatively be measured in various work situations.
Extensive bibliographies are provided which will permit formal verification of each category and measure and lead the reader to domain-specific tools and instruments appropriate to any environment which must be engineered for human performance.
Dr. Gawron extends these performance measures beyond their traditional role in target acquisition/equipment operator/pilot/command & control environments to a variety of work situations and systems; e,g, pp. 66-67 on White Collar performance measures. I believe that this variety of non-defense/transportation cognitive and physical performance measures will become increasingly important in our knowledge-based society.
This handbook provides the knowledge and tools to understand and specifically measure human performance, workload and situation awareness in the full range of environments and human-machine systems and it will become increasingly valuable in our highly automated and knowledge/computer-based working environments.
--Ira Laefsky, MS Engineering/MBA
Information Technology, HCI Consultant and Researcher
Formerly Senior Consultant at Arthur D. Little and DIGITAL Equipment Corporation

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Human performance measurement is the cornerstone of human factors and experimental psychology and the Human Performance Measures Handbook has long been its foundational reference. Reflecting a wider range and scope, the second edition, newly named Human Performance, Workload, and Situational Awareness Measures Handbook, presents changes in the field and increased applications. It covers the basics of measurement and provides authoritative summaries of over 100 performance, workload, and situational awareness (SA) measures. It contains evaluations of metrics drawn from an extensive literature review and from hundreds of actual projects, grounding research with real-world applicability. The book also defines workload; provides performance, subjective, simulation, and psychological measures; and gives guidance on how to select the right workload measure. The author rounds out the coverage by presenting four types of measures for SA: subjective, observational, physiological, and measures of SA ability. What's New Additional measures of team performanceExpanded glossary includes terms added to the discipline over the last 7 yearsUpdated information from various journals including Ergonomics and Aviation, Space, and Environmental MedicineThe second edition of a tried-and-true resource, this handbook offers an overview of measurement issues and information on descriptions, strengths and limitations, and data requirements, as well as references for various measures. The original has proven invaluable to the field, and the new edition does the same by providing the tools required to develop, evaluate, and select systems for optimum performance, workload, and SA.

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Human Factors in Aviation (Cognition and Perception) Review

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(More customer reviews)If you are in senior airline management and are wondering why things happen the way they happen and you really can't figure out why, this book might provide some help. It's the first step towards understanding the human impact in airline operations, be that pilots, cabin crew or ground crews. Far from being an expert in the field I think this work provides great background material, probably to be better understood when you hold a degree in psychology, but also readable for the un-initiated like myself. CRM specialists/trainers, Human Resource Managers etc. should have this book on their shelv(es).

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Human Factors in Aviation, written for the widespread aviation community--engineers, scientist, pilots, managers, government personnel, and others--is also be of interest to those in nonaviation fields. The authors/contributors were chosen not only as experts in their fields, but because they could write for a wider audience than they customarily address. The organization of the book takes the reader from the general to the specific, first covering broad issues, then the more specific topics of pilot performance, human factors in aircraft design, and vehicles and systems. The physiological and medical aspects are well documented also.

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