Overview
Field Test of a Simple, Rapid, and Objective Behavioral Assay of Group Cohesion in an Antarctic Space Analog Environment
Principal Investigator:
Peter G. Roma, Ph.D.
Organization:
Institutes for Behavior Resources, Inc.
Technical Summary
The original primary aims/objectives for the project are to (1) assess operational acceptability of an objective group-level behavioral assay of cohesion in an isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environment, (2) validate the behavioral assay data against naturally occurring behaviors and subjective opinions relevant to group cohesion, and (3) inform next-generation software development based on user and operator feedback.
The winter-over period and thus the window for data collection is from approximately February through October. Despite the persistent efforts and remarkable professionalism of the Research MD responsible for carrying out all biomedical and behavioral research protocols, as of this submission (approximate half-way point of the winter), no behavioral or psychosocial data have been collected for our project or another group-level protocol from colleagues in the Netherlands. While this outcome may seem discouraging in terms of operational feasibility of team-level testing, note that in addition to our group-level testing, data collection for individual-level protocols (e.g., exercise, physiology, sleep) has been scattered and inconsistent at best both within and across individual Crew members. The acute cause for the poor data yield is a lack of Crew participation. Several potential underlying factors, including the Crew members’intrinsic interest in contributing to science and highly variable work ethic, have been compounded by unwelcome variations in perceived administrative support from the external agencies responsible for managing Concordia Station. Given the circumstances, the key findings thus far have been limited to our secondary goals for the project, specifically the broader issues of understanding the administrative and logistical processes of US-based Investigators conducting biobehavioral research at Concordia Station, the overarching importance of the relationship between Crew and management in operational settings, and empirically informing the return-on-investment analysis for prospective BHP research conducted at Concordia Station and other ICE space analog environments.
For the coming year, we plan to continue our attempts to collect team-level behavioral and psychosocial data throughout the remainder of the 2012 winter-over period. If successful, the resulting data would not likely elucidate the process of developing group cohesion over time; however, concomitant questionnaire data may still yield insight on the predictive validity of our behavioral technology. In addition, given the extraordinary circumstances of the 2012 winter-over campaign, we have been invited to return to Concordia for the 2013 campaign.
Earth Applications
The heart of the research is to develop a simple, rapid, and objective language-free behavioral assay of cooperative propensity at the group level to serve as a complement to subjective questionnaire-based assessments at the individual level. Once fully developed, this technology could be used to inform the Crew selection, composition, and even training processes through novel but heuristically informative quantitative modeling of individual- and team-level "social personality" profiles. However, this technology would not have to be limited to applications within human space exploration, as any organization that relies on cooperation in high-performance and multi-national teams including military, medical/healthcare, athletics, business and other settings could employ this emerging technology.