Evaluation of the Team Workload Questionnaire (TWLQ) in a Team Choice Task

Abstract

To date, conceptual explanations of workload and development of workload measures have been focused primarily on individual workload, the workload of a single operator as they perform a task. Yet, this focus on individual workload does not consider the many situations in which operators are required to collaborate, communicate, and operate as a team to achieve successful performance outcomes. In short, conceptualization and development of team workload measures have lagged behind those of individual workload. In an effort to meet the need for a conceptually-driven team workload measure, Sellers, Helton, Näswall, Funke, and Knott (2014) recently developed the team workload questionnaire (TWLQ). In developing the measure, Sellers and colleagues asked rugby players to rate their workload on TWLQ items. Subsequent exploratory factor analysis suggested that team workload was best described by three latent factors: Taskwork, the demands for task execution on the individual; Teamwork, the demands for team members to cooperate and coordinate with other teammates; and Team-Task Balancing, the demands associated with the need to manage both taskwork and teamwork – reflective of the dual task nature of working within a team. As with any novel measure of workload, it is important to continue evaluation of the measure’s sensitivity to task demands, diagnosticity regarding sources of task demands, and correlation with performance outcomes. Early research with the TWLQ has demonstrated that the measure is sensitive to changes in team task demands and the effects of training in a team UAV control task (Helton, Epling, de Joux, Funke, & Knott, 2015; Sellers, Helton, Näswall, Funke, & Knott, 2015). An additional, critical component of continued validation of the TWLQ is confirmation of the factor structure initially observed by Sellers and colleagues (2014) with data generated from a novel task. Concerns regarding generalizability are particularly germane because of variability in the nature of tasks that teams engage. Whereas some teams are tasked with executing coordinated physical activities, such as is the case in athletic contests (e.g., rugby), the task of other teams is to talk, plan, and decide (e.g., committees; McGrath, 1984). In the current study, we applied the TWLQ in a collaborative choice task (a personnel hiring decision). This team choice task required a high degree of communication, discussion, and joint decision making – team dynamics that contrast sharply with those required during an execution task. In short, the nature of the teamwork in the current study was significantly different from the teamwork evaluated by Sellers and colleagues (2014) when generating the TWLQ. Our goal in this study was to continue validation of the TWLQ by examining its factor structure with a novel dataset derived from a task requiring qualitatively different team dynamics. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the present data (N = 144) were a poor fit for the three-factor structure of the TWLQ. Subsequent exploratory factor analysis revealed a much more interrelated model of team workload with no clear division between the three conceptual factors described in the original validation of the TWLQ. This finding indicates that the factor structure of the TWLQ did not generalize to the present team choice task. Given that the duties of operational teams vary, it is critical that future research examine how the conceptual structure of team workload may be altered by task type.