Human Performance Measures Handbook

Rating:
Summary: More of an Information Flea Market than a Handbook
Review: This book was written to fill a definite need for applied human factors practitioners. Unfortunately, the frustrations outweigh the benefits. It does catalogue a number of measures, but fails to succeed in its aim. The text reads more like a stack of literature review notecards than a handbook or guide. At times, it hands out results without talking about what a given researcher was measuring or addressing. It is almost as if they published an expanded draft outline instead of the real book it was supposed to grow into.

It's title clearly states that it addresses Human Performance Measures. Liberally splashed in amongst the measures, however, are entry after entry of experimental tasks that present vague task results without talking about the measures used to determine those results. It does so without pointing out that these items are tasks, not measures. When it does address true measures, it offers no explanation of when that type of measure is appropriate, or even how to use it. Instead, in simple literature review fashion, it simply cites results of different journal articles.

This volume is completely hamstrung by the publisher formatting of the text. When you flip through the book, it appears to be a single, 188-page-long run-on paragraph. Reading a specific section reveals the same problem: headers and subheaders are barely (if at all) distinguishable from the text, which is of low to moderate value anyways.

It is a perfect example of an information flea market - There are a very few good bits of information in there, but you have to spend a whole lot of time digging around to find it. The topic was a great idea, but the execution was lacking. It just takes too much digging time for the potential payoff.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent reference
Review: This handbook provides an extremely comprehensive review of hundreds of measures. Each review has a general description, strengths and limitations based on data, data collection requirements, thresholds of critical values that have been empirically tested, and references. Hundreds of reports and articles are referenced. The document has brevity, clarity, and integrity. There is no author's conjecture.