Your task is to develop an integrated design for examining or investigating an issue or problem involving human factors in the aviation/aerospace industry as it might apply in a human-centric environment, model, simulation, work situation, or other application for use that would apply in industry, research, or operational environment. Hopefully, the topic will be inspired by some of the studies or issues that you have heard about or read about in this course. Although you will not be conducting the study or investigation that you propose, you will construct a research design in APA journal format (see the APA style manual) that is 8 pages in length. Your introduction and background will explain the research statement or question and justify it by reference to previous research found in the scientific literature, and by logical argument. The method will describe data sources, participants (where applicable), variables, metrics, and procedures. The results should explain how you would analyze the data and the discussion should present possible outcomes and their applied implications.
Essentially, you would work toward constructing a design for an existing or emerging technology or situation, employing a human factors perspective that incorporates elements from each of the course Learning Outcomes. An essential aspect of this design, and the manuscript you write to describe it, is citing relevant research that supports your approach and explains the rationale used. Be certain your manuscript integrates topics covered in the modules of this course and that you address all the course Learning Outcomes. This may involve only a few sentences for some of them, but each outcome must be addressed to some extent.
Introduction:
You should have a clear research question or statement in mind, but you do not want to introduce that at the very beginning. You would start by indicating a problem or situation that has not been resolved satisfactorily yet, and then explaining why it is important to conduct further study or investigation into the matter.
Relevant Literature:
You should consult the existing literature (trying to stay within the last 5 years), summarizing pertinent research on the topic in a broader context. This context should make your research effort appear to be a natural and interesting thing to do. It should be clear by now that personal justifications (“I thought it would be interesting to ….”) are not appropriate. The literature you cite in the body of your manuscript should relate what has been attempted (successfully and otherwise) to resolve the issue you have chosen. If there is a consensus in the literature about what the next steps in research should be, you should indicate those. Your review should conclude with what the next logical step would be toward seeking a resolution to the problem, and the research statement or question for your manuscript.
Method:
After you have described the context and presented and justified your research question or statement, the next step is to briefly outline how you plan to test your idea. This is the place where you might describe possible confounding variables and how you plan to address them. This section should include your sources of data (participants, databases, publications, etc.), metrics or measures you might employ (and why), criteria for evaluation (including validity), variables to consider, materials used (if needed), procedures, and the form with which results might be presented. Not every design may need all of these items, and some may need additional ones. The APA Publication Manual should serve as your primary guidance in developing the method section. In principle, the Method section should provide enough information for another researcher to replicate your study.
Results:
Here, you describe the comparisons in your data and assessments that are critical for addressing your hypothesis or research question. What might you expect to find from your study? An explanation of how you might present your findings would be appropriate, as well.
Discussion:
For this part, you describe the applied implications of your findings. What is their meaning? That is, what would they imply about the cognition issues under investigation? First, describe specific implications, and then more general ones. Again, relate your work/ideas to other research in the field. How does your work fit into the “big picture” of previous work on this subject?
