ABSTRACT
Engineering psychologists need to be able to make inferences about what works and how well it works in design, training, procedures, and selection for real-world tasks. Engineering psychologists need research methods. They need to be able to collect relevant data. They need to be able to ask pertinent questions of those data, often questions about cause and effect, driven by applications, and they need to be able to assess the reliability of their answers. Finally, they need to be able to use those answers to improve applications to human–system interaction. A variety of research methods are available to the engineering psychologist to ensure that the conclusions they draw, in formulating principles of human performance and human interaction with systems, are valid and useful. The validity of these answers increases as additional methods converge on the same answer. This chapter provides a theoretically driven overview of the variety of appropriate research and analysis methods for aspiring engineering psychologists. Although not a replacement for a specialty course in research methods, the chapter provides a solid overview for engineering psychologists.
