Project Background

The Human Factors Research Project (formerly the Aerospace Crew Research Project) at The University of Texas at Austin was funded to investigate individual, team, and organizational factors determining performance and safety in aviation, space, and medicine. It was charged with developing new measures of performance in these environments as well as assessing the impact of human factors training on attitudes and behavior.

The project had five primary goals:

• To conduct basic research into the determinants of individual and team performance.

• To refine methodologies for the study of individual and group behavior.

• To encourage the application of basic research findings in the aerospace community.

• To measure the effects of cultures (organizational and national) on behavior.

• To train a new generation of researchers in the behavioral sciences.

Guiding the research was a theoretical model of group performance and a strategy of collecting data in natural settings. A collaborative arrangement with participating airlines and training organizations allowed the Project to generate confidential databases that served as national resources.