Sensitivity analysis techniques for models of human behavior.

Human and social modeling has emerged as an important research area at Sandia National Laboratories due to its potential to improve national defense-related decision-making in the presence of uncertainty. To learn about which sensitivity analysis techniques are most suitable for models of human behavior, different promising methods were applied to an example model, tested, and compared. The example model simulates cognitive, behavioral, and social processes and interactions, and involves substantial nonlinearity, uncertainty, and variability. Results showed that some sensitivity analysis methods create similar results, and can thus be considered redundant. However, other methods, such as global methods that consider interactions between inputs, can generate insight not gained from traditional methods