ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a pragmatic look at communications measures especially suited for measuring macrocognition. Macrocognition at the team level, or team cognition, can be observed in many of the cognitive activities performed by teams such as collaborative planning and replanning, team decision making, group design, or joint problem solving. The chapter attempts to fill theory and practice gap by focusing on practical considerations, pitfalls, and guidelines for data collection, analysis, and interpretation of communication data. Knowing what type of data to collect and how to collect it is therefore a fundamental concern when considering communication-based measures of macrocognition. The chapter describes four types of communication data that have been useful for measuring macrocognition: audio, chat, email, and logged communication events. Chat communication consists of sequences of typed messages sent by team members. Two dimensions of chat data that need to be considered during data collection include communication content and message flow.
