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3
Method
3.1
Participants
The strategic decision-making game was designed for experts (in this case operational
analysts in a military setting). However, at the time of the experiment not enough
experts in the field with a similar level of prior knowledge could be found for a
large(r) scale study. Therefore, we opted for research with university students (55%
undergraduate, 45% graduate level). In total 60 participants, 33 males and 27 females
within the age range of 18 to 41 years old (M = 25.1, SD = 4.69) were recruited for
the study. The majority of participants, 63.3% (N = 38), played computer or/and video
games. The participants were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions. As a
reward for the participation, the participants received a coupon worth 5.00.
3.2
Materials
As the game was designed to train decision-making in dilemmas that did not have
clear right or wrong answers, the learning goals were rather diffuse. Consequently as
a measure for learning we used the Structural Knowledge Assessment (SKA) [15],
which elicits a participant's knowledge structure about the game. This knowledge
structure can then be compared to that of an expert, which results in a similarity score.
For more explanation see [15], for the referent knowledge structure used to compare
participant's knowledge structures against, see Figure 2.
Fig. 2. Referent knowledge structure
In order to measure how involved the player was in the game, and to some extent
how much of a game they felt the instructional material was, we used the Game Expe-
rience Questionnaire (GEQ) [16]. Lastly, a small knowledge test with 5 three item
multiple choice questions was administered, that tested whether the participant re-
membered a few events in the game. This was mostly done as an extra check to
determine the validity of the SKA.
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