A review of definitions of fatigue – And a step towards a whole definition

Despite its importance to health and safety, there is a long history of disagreement about how to operationalize fatigue when studying exertion in human transport operators. The current article reviews existing definitions, and consequently proposes a new definition as a step forward. A consideration of everyday use of the term finds that people often seem to use fatigue to describe a sensation related to exertion. Formal definitions of fatigue can be divided into a few broad definitions, capturing experiential, physiological and performance aspects of the construct, and many narrow definitions, focusing only on one or two of these aspects. Most existing definitions do not account explicitly for the role of sleep drives and sleepiness. They also fail to account for a wide range of factors associated with transport operator exertion, such as motivation and individual, organizational and environmental factors. Each of these points is assimilated in the derivation of a new “whole definition” of fatigue, in which the experience of human operator fatigue is a central aspect of the fatigue process. Although multidimensional and diffuse, the evolved definition does not detract from the measurement and study of limited aspects of fatigue. Rather, by describing the dynamic complexity of fatigue, it may help make explicit what different studies do or do not measure or account for in terms of the different aspects of fatigue. It is claimed that the proposed definition could be used to help harmonise attempts to study and tackle fatigue in transport health and safety contexts.     

Examining arguments against quantitative research: “Case studies” illustrating the challenge of finding a sound philosophical basis for a human sciences approach to psychology

This article offers a close examination of critiques of quantitative research by Michell, 2011, Marecek, 2011, and Morawski (2011). One goal is to show that these three critics actually share with most mainstream quantitative researchers commitments to the Cartesian framework, even though this is not obvious because Cartesianism can appear in different guises. As a result of these commitments, the three theorists advance criticisms of mainstream quantitative research that fail to identify its key failings, put forward flawed views about how we should conduct research, and offer misguided criticisms of an approach I advocate called explicitly interpretive quantitative research. Another goal is to use the examination of the three critiques as a vehicle for clarifying the participatory perspective, a philosophical viewpoint that departs from the Cartesian framework. With regard to research methodology, the participatory perspective provides the basis for explicitly interpretive quantitative research, leads to ideas about changes we should make in how we conduct qualitative research, and treats quantitative and qualitative research as fundamentally similar because both should be pursued as interpretive modes of inquiry. I suggest that my analyses of the three critiques of quantitative research – or “case studies,” as I call these analyses – also may prove useful to researchers and theorists who want to develop a human sciences approach to other issues besides research methodology by helping them (1) recognize when lines of thinking that seem to depart from the mainstream actually represent variants of Cartesianism, and (2) consider what the participatory perspective might have to offer if they were to use it as the philosophical basis for their efforts.