Communications-based Performance Assessment for Air and Space Operations Centers: Preliminary Research

Abstract

The use of electronic chat has become widespread for both social and work applications. Increasingly, individuals using text chat applications engage in multiple simultaneous conversations with co-workers to accomplish complex tasks. This is especially true in the military, where it is used extensively in Navy, Army, and Air Force command and control environments. The current effort seeks to leverage stored communications from electronic chat to examine the relationship between communication flow and team performance. ChainMaster, a tool that looks at process elements of communication, was used to investigate the relationship between communication patterns and other performance measures in the context of an emulated Air and Space Operations Center (AOC). Results indicated a modest relationship between communications patterns and measures of performance. Applicability of these results in other domains is discussed.

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