Abstract
This paper proposes an overarching structure for describing and organizing the content of human factors and ergonomics (HF/E) research. Instead of a uni-dimensional, topic-based approach to classification, instances of research are classified according to five dimensions: domain, phenomenon/task, intervention, method and theory/concepts. A small study was conducted to explore the utility of the proposed taxonomy using a data set of 55 journal papers and three different coders. This study generated preliminary support for the general utility of a multi-dimensional taxonomy for HF/E and for the specific utility of the proposed dimensions. Most importantly, this study identified difficulties associated with the development and application of such a taxonomy to inform future development and evaluation efforts.
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