An Empirical Study on Content Analysis Use in Test and Evaluation Deficiency Report Analysis

Abstract

This research investigated strategies and heuristics used to prioritize system deficiencies identified during test and evaluation. Five participants were recruited to participate in this laboratory study, and were assigned to an experiment condition either with or without content analysis training. Content analysis is a well-known methodology for identifying patterns and themes in qualitative datasets. In either experiment condition, subjects were asked to (1) classify a set of flight simulator deficiencies, (2) develop a deficiency resolution priority order using those classifications, and (3) complete a set of questionnaires regarding the completion of these tasks and demographic information. Across the five subjects, there was fairly high variability in the strategies and methods used. Therefore, the impact of the content analysis training was inconclusive. However, the variety of observed approaches warrants future research, specifically into the use of multiple categorization schemes when deciding upon a deficiency resolution priority order.