An experimental investigation of the impact of domain complexity on knowledge acquisition (KA) methods

This paper experimentally examines the effects of domain complexity on the quality of knowledge acquired and the efficiency with which knowledge acquisition (KA) is accomplished. The experiment is performed using two of the most prominent KA methods: unstructured interviews and protocol analysis. One contribution of the research is that it employs an experimental strategy that pays particular attention to addressing problematic issues of measurement and control. The experimental results indicate that domain complexity strongly influences the quality of knowledge acquired when protocol analysis is used for KA. While finding the other hypotheses to be inconclusive, some interesting trends were also identified regarding the quality and efficiency of knowledge acquisition methods.