Interaction Diagrams: Development of a Method for Observing Group Interactions

Abstract

Recording of team meeting’s processes with electronic devices can be problematic because of the invasiveness of the process: issues with privacy; interpretation difficulty with noise or quiet speech; and distortion of participants’ behaviour. There is a need for less intrusive methods. We developed the interaction diagram method by extending the directed graph nature of sociograms to capture the time sequence of events, including the identification of the person, communication behaviour, and duration of interactions. The method was tested on engineering team meetings. Data processing by quantitative and qualitative analysis is shown to be feasible. Several team roles were observed in the engineering context: Initiator; Passive collector; Explorer; Information provider; Facilitator; Arbitrator; Representative; Gatekeeper; Connector; and Outsider. The work provides a graphical representation of the record of the interaction flow during meetings. It does this without needing video recording. It is also an efficient method, as it does not require subsequent transcription or coding. It provides a procedure to quickly analyse communication situations, identify group roles, and compare group activity at different meetings.

Team Role Adoption and Distribution in Engineering Project Meetings

“…We previously developed a method to record team interactions using a paper notebook, hence avoiding the intrusiveness of audio and video recording [33]. This was done by preliminary observation of students' interactions at several engineering project meetings.…”

“…Engineering Team roles per Nestsiarovich and Pons More recently, [33] devised a new categorisation for team roles. The roles were a derivative of those of [13], but further clarified based on an observational study of engineering project interactions.…”

“…The researcher did not participate in the discussion but sat aside taking notes. There was no audio or video recording, only written notes using the previously developed interaction diagram (ID) method [33]. Participant identity was recorded using a code.…”

“…A number of team roles was assigned to each participant of the project meeting. Our approach used the identified roles as defined by Nestsiarovich and Pons [33]. We adopted the general approach of [31] for the way that team roles were inferred.…”

“…Sci. 2020, 10, x FOR PEER REVIEW 7 of Interaction Diagram: communication situation 1 [reproduced from[33] by permission].…”