is sa shared or distributed in team work? an exploratory study in an intelligence analysis task

this study compared two theoretical approaches to situation awareness (sa): the psychological school of thought and the systems ergonomics school of thought, by assessing measurement of team sa within these frameworks. two teams were assigned and organised into either a traditional hierarchy or a peer-to-peer organisational structure in a single case study design. measures derived from the psychological and systems ergonomics perspectives were applied to assess their sensitivity for assessing team sa. no statistically significant differences were found between the two teams when measures originating in the psychological tradition were considered: differences were found, however, for measures originating in the systems ergonomics tradition. literature concerned with team sa reveals a lack of consensus with regards to explaining the nature of the phenomenon as well as its measurement. this paper argues for a debate in the field to clarify what constitutes appropriate measurement techniques for team sa and suggests that these are taken from the systems ergonomics tradition, as suggested by the present studies findings.