Cognitive Task Analysis Review

What is this report about?

This report is concerned with Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA). It covers the origins, growth, and diversity of CTA as an activity, current practice in the UK Armed Forces and civilian operations, reviews an extensive range of archive material and draws a number of conclusions as to the best practice.

What problem does the report address?

There is no agreed standard method for conducting CTA in the UK Armed Forces and therefore no standard software tools to help analysts perform CTA.

What is the benefit of this work?

It promotes the use of CTA as a tool during training and procurement activities and is a precursor to the development of a software tool to help analysts perform CTA.

Who should take note of it?

Anybody who may be interested in Task Analysis as an aid to the development of a training programme or for the formal understanding of some complex activity for reasons that are not immediately concerned with training such as Systems Design, HF Integration, Safety and Error Avoidance.

What is the report's status?

Final

What are the main issues addressed in the report?

CTA Definition and Description
CTA methods and Approaches
Classifications for CTA methods and a taxonomy of methods
Discussion of various approaches to CTA and introduces the Cognitive Work Analysis Framework that includes the application of several specific CTA methods
CTA Usage: Military and Elsewhere
Usage of CTA is made by the UK Military
Current practice relevant to the UK armed forces is addressed considering all three military services.
Civilian practice with CTA
Software Support for CTA

What are the findings?

That there is no consensus of opinion as to what constitutes a CTA method
The report reveals that there is no consistent use of CTA in the Armed Forces
Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) is potentially the best all-round methodology but still requires considerable development.
Goals Means Task Analysis (GMTA) appears to be a good intermediate approach, suited to both training and procurement.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSA) is the easiest method to implement, has already got support within the Armed Forces, is probably the best suited to inter-operate with the HTA tool and offers a direct benefit to training.
The lack of good CTA tools appears to be directly related to the lack of agreement on the best CTA methodology

What is recommended?

A software tool based on KSA could be prototyped very quickly and would integrate well with the HTA tool being developed by the HFI- DTC. This would offer a direct benefit to the training branches of all services, and would also offer a standard KSA method to anyone who has to observe JSP502. This is considered to have the lowest risk in progression towards CWA, and to offer the maximum payback in terms of immediate utility.

Why bother?

CTA techniques could be implemented so as to benefit UK MoD with regard to both training and procurement.