EAGER: Foundations for Combining Normative and Behavioral Research Methodologies to Study Systems Engineering

这个探索性研究早期拨款（EAGER）项目的研究目标是证明使用网络严肃游戏进行控制实验的可行性，以回答系统工程项目中有关决策制定的问题。严肃游戏是指用于娱乐以外目的的游戏，例如训练飞行员的飞行模拟器。该研究将利用行为科学的成熟技术来确定游戏干预中的受试者的平均行为是否与传统的基于文本的调查相同。调查将集中在沉没成本现象的背景下，卫星工程项目为研究场景。沉没成本现象在行为科学界得到了广泛的研究，为本研究提供了坚实的参考框架。将创建一个基于游戏的实验网络框架来支持这项研究。如果成功，本研究将对系统工程研究产生重大影响。研究系统工程方法的需要是显而易见的：许多最大的系统工程项目产生重大的延迟，成本超支，并且经常不能满足规定的性能目标。然而，到目前为止，系统工程研究界缺乏一个框架来评估被提议的方法的控制实验。这限制了研究进展，阻碍了新方法的采用。本研究调查的基于游戏的方法可以发挥这一作用。本研究也将为工程决策中的沉没成本效应提供新的证据。之前对沉没成本的研究并没有关注工程师或工程决策，因此这些新数据可以为潜在困扰工程项目的一个问题提供重要的见解。

The research objective of this EArly-Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project is to demonstrate the feasibility of using web-enabled serious games to conduct controlled experiments for answering questions about decision making in systems engineering projects. A serious game is a game used for purposes other than entertainment, such as a flight simulator for training pilots. The research will leverage established techniques from the behavioral sciences to determine whether subjects in the gaming intervention behave, on average, the same as those given a traditional text-based survey. The investigation will focus on the sunk cost phenomenon in the context of a satellite engineering project as a study scenario. The sunk cost phenomenon has been widely studied in the behavioral sciences community, so it provides a solid frame of reference for this investigation. A web-enabled framework for game-based experimentation will be created to support this research. If successful, this research will have a significant impact on systems engineering research. The need for research on systems engineering methods is apparent: many of the largest systems engineering projects incur significant delays, cost overruns, and often fail to meet stated performance objectives. However, to date the systems engineering research community lacks a framework for controlled experimentation for evaluating proposed methods. This limits research progress and impedes new method adoption. The game-based approach investigated in this research can serve this role. This research also will contribute new evidence about the sunk cost effect in engineering decision making. Prior studies of sunk cost have not focused on engineers or engineering decisions, so this new data can provide important insight into one problem that potentially plagues engineering projects.