Subproject for A US-Russian Collaborative Proposal for Data Collection in HERA: The Relationship between Composition, Interpersonal Relations, and Team Effectiveness in Space Crews

Long-duration space exploration missions (LDSEM) will include a number of challenges such as prolonged isolation and confinement that are likely to impinge on team functioning and increase the importance of social integration, shared cognition, and effective team processes needed for mission success. Noshir Contractor, Leslie DeChurch, and their respective research groups at Northwestern will work closely with the PI Suzanne Bell to collaborate with Russian space researchers. This project will integrate the methods for team measurement currently in use by IBMP and NASA, to develop a model of interpersonal relations in isolated and confined environments (ICE). A key intellectual advancement of this project is the use of multi-relational network analysis to track the development of interpersonal relations among astronaut crews. Professor Contractor and his research group will be responsible for extending current relational event network modeling techniques to include multi-relational network events that co-evolve with individual and relational states in the network. Current models are able to predict a relational event (such as you who sends a message to whom) based on the temporal structure of prior relational events and individual attributes. The extensions we will implement will also be able to predict future relational states (such as trust) based on prior relational states and events, as well as individual attributes. We will implement these techniques to model the data we have collected, transcribed and text mined from HERA and other sources. Further, NU will be responsible not only for how these sequential structural signatures form, but also how those signatures perform. The post doc, with guidance from the PI, will be responsible for developing methodology and analyzing the data. The programmer will be responsible for implementing the algorithms. Professor DeChurch and members of her research group will design and implement studies within NASA analogs and laboratory settings that produce streams of data on interpersonal relations amenable to analysis using multi-relational network analysis. In addition, Professors Contractor, DeChurch, and their research groups will conduct literature reviews, develop measures, analyze data, and prepare findings for dissemination.