Protocol analysis is a
psychological
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...
research method that
elicits verbal reports from research participants. Protocol analysis is used to study thinking in
cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of human mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, whi ...
(Crutcher, 1994),
cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include percep ...
(Simon & Kaplan, 1989), and behavior analysis (Austin & Delaney, 1998). It has found further application in the design of surveys and interviews (Sudman, Bradburn & Schwarz, 1996),
usability testing
Usability testing is a technique used in user-centered interaction design to evaluate a product by testing it on users. This can be seen as an irreplaceable usability practice, since it gives direct input on how real users use the system. It is mo ...
(Henderson, Smith, Podd, & Varela-Alvarez, 1995),
educational psychology
Educational psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of human learning. The study of learning processes, from both cognitive psychology, cognitive and behavioral psychology, behavioral perspectives, allows researc ...
(Pressley & Afflerbach 1995; Renkl, 1997) and
design research (Gero & McNeill 1998). With the introduction of video- and audio-based surveys, the scale and scope of verbal report collection is increased dramatically compared to in-person verbal report recording (Byrd, Joseph, Gongora, & Sirota 2023).
See also
*
Content analysis
*
Partial concurrent thinking aloud
*
Think aloud protocol
References
* Austin, J., & Delaney, P. F. (1998). Protocol analysis as a tool for behavior analysis. ''Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 15'', 41–56.
* Crutcher, R. J. (1994). Telling what we know: The use of verbal report methodologies in psychological research. ''Psychological Science, 5'', 241–244.
* Ericsson, K. A., & Crutcher, R. J. (1991). Introspection and verbal reports on cognitive processes - two approaches to the study of thought processes: A response to Howe. ''New Ideas in Psychology, 9,'' 57–71.
* Ericsson, K. A., & Simon, H. A. (1993). ''Protocol analysis: Verbal reports as data''. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
* Gero, J. S. & McNeill, T (1998) An approach to the analysis of design protocols, Design Studies 19(1): 21-61.
* Pressley, M., & Afflerbach, P. (1995). ''Verbal protocols of reading: The nature of constructively responsive reading''. Hillsdale, NJ, USA: Erlbaum.
* Renkl, A. (1997). Learning from worked-out examples: A study on individual differences. ''Cognitive Science, 21'', 1–29.
* Sudman, S., Bradburn, N. M., & Schwarz, N. (Eds.)(1996). ''Thinking about answers: The application of cognitive processes to survey methodology.'' San Francisco, CA, USA: Jossey-Bass.
* Byrd, Nick; Joseph, Brianna; Gongora, Gabriela; Sirota, Miroslav (2023). "Tell Us What You Really Think: A Think Aloud Protocol Analysis of the Verbal Cognitive Reflection Test". ''Journal of Intelligence''. 11 (4). https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence11040076.
External links
protocol analysis A tool for facilitating verbal protocol analysis in English, German, Spanish, or Chinese.
Psychological methodology
Cognitive science