A formative approach to the strategies analysis phase of cognitive work analysis

Abstract

Strategies Analysis, the third phase of Cognitive Work Analysis, helps investigators consider the range of ways in which workers can perform control tasks. Most existing approaches to Strategies Analysis identify a limited number of domain-specific strategies. We present a two-phase formative Strategies Analysis method intended to expose the range of strategies possible within a work system and the likelihood that different types of strategies will be selected in different contexts. The first phase, the preparatory phase, identifies generalised constraints that affect the range and selection of strategies, and the categories of strategies that may be applied to any domain. In the second phase, the application phase, investigators use the outputs of the preparatory phase to explore the impact that different work situations, tasks and workers have on the categories of strategies most likely to be adopted.

Keywords:

• Strategies Analysis
• Cognitive Work Analysis
• formative approach
• performance variability
• decision making

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge support from the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant LP0776636 and the financial and professional support from BlueScope Steel Ltd, Australia and BP Refinery Bulwer Island, Australia. We thank Ian Cameron, Erik Hollnagel and The University of Queensland Cognitive Engineering Research Group for their review and insightful feedback. We also thank Antony Hilliard, Paul Salmon and Miranda Cornelissen for their helpful discussions on the challenges of developing a formative Strategies Analysis method, and Neelam Naikar, Catherine Burns, John Flach and Greg Jamieson for earlier input. Finally, we thank Robert Hoffman and two anonymous reviewers for their incisive comments on previous versions of this article.