Subjective Multidimensional Workload Index for Distributed Teams: Development Program for the Team Subjective Assessment of Workload (T-SAW)

Currently, there is a severe lack of subjective workload measures developed specifically to address the characteristics of distributed ad-hoc teams. The significance of the problem is considerable, given the fact that many organizations (e.g., industry, military, and academia) continue to rely more and more on distributed teams and collaborative technology to accomplish tasks and goals. In response to this growing need, SA Technologies proposes to develop the first fully validated, domain-independent, diagnostic, and prescriptive subjective workload measure, which will be sensitive to different team configurations, from intact co-located teams, to ad-hoc distributed teams in any domain. SA Technologies will leverage its vast experience in the field and conduct a review of the current methods of appraising subjective workload in order to identify the common theoretical and practical limitations that need to be expanded upon and integrated into a coherent theoretical framework that will provide the basis for the development of a subjective workload measure for teams. Finally, SA Technologies will take a programmatic approach to empirically testing the measure with human subjects, via a distributed team testbed, in order to establish external validity by demonstrating scale sensitivity to various measures of effectiveness and measures of performance, thus establishing prescriptive value.