Extracting team mental models through textual analysis

Summary An approach, called map analysis, for extracting, analyzing and combining representations of individual's mental models as cognitive maps is presented. This textual analysis technique allows the researcher to extract cognitive maps, locate similarities across maps, and combine maps to generate a team map. Using map analysis the researcher can address questions about the nature of team mental models and the extent to which sharing is necessary for effective teamwork. This technique is illustrated using data drawn from a study of software engineering teams. The impact of critical coding choices on the resultant findings is examined. It is shown that various coding choices have systematic effects on the complexity of the coded maps and their similarity. Consequently, a thorough analysis requires analyzing the data several times under different coding choices. For example, re-analysis under different coding scenarios revealed that although members of successful teams tend to have more elaborate, more widely shared maps than members of non-successful teams, this difference is significant only when the data is unfiltered. Thus a better interpretation of this result is that all teams have comparable models, but successful teams are able to describe their models in more ways than are non-successful teams. ? 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.