Premium
5.3.1 Applying Meta‐analysis in Support of Systems Thinking
Author(s) -
Licklider Christy A. R.,
Henderson Steven J.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
incose international symposium
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2334-5837
DOI - 10.1002/j.2334-5837.2014.tb03160.x
Subject(s) - critical systems thinking , systems thinking , computer science , systematic process , thinking processes , process (computing) , parallel thinking , system of systems , systems analysis , management science , critical thinking , systems design , work in process , psychology , artificial intelligence , engineering , statistical thinking , mathematics education , operations management , software engineering , operating system
Systems thinking helps facilitate the understanding of systems, their structure, and important interrelationships with their environments. As such, systems thinking is an important aspect of systems engineering and other related fields. However, certain large‐scale, complex systems can thwart systems thinking due to their vast size and morass of interactions. Moreover, many such systems accumulate a large body of research that can yield seemingly contradictory inputs into the systems thinking process. In this paper, we advocate the use of statistical meta‐analysis to augment systems thinking about such systems. Our approach, which we describe as Meta‐analysis in support of Systems Thinking (MAST), maps standard outputs from meta‐analysis to systems thinking constructs. We demonstrate our approach to an actual systems thinking problem involving the United States (US) active duty military's personnel retention system. We include a critique of our approach and guidelines for its application to other systems.