Some amount of interpersonal conflict is expected on long-duration missions, whether between crew members or between the crew and the ground. However, severe conflicts can interfere with mission success and even safety. Severe, ongoing conflicts have been reported on long-duration space missions, Antarctic expeditions and a recent long-duration space mission simulation. Nonetheless, empirically-supported tools to help crews prevent, assess and manage interpersonal conflicts have not been developed. This study addresses Bioastronautics Roadmap Risk 24: Human Performance Failure Due to Poor Psychosocial Adaptation.

The investigators have begun development of an interactive multimedia portal to help long-duration flyers prevent, detect, assess and manage their own psychosocial problems. This work has been supported by two NSBRI grants. In the first grant, program architecture was developed to organize the types of content and experiences users can find in the portal. Sample content about depression and interpersonal conflict was also developed as a prototype to demonstrate how training could be delivered through the system. The second NSBRI grant was to complete and evaluate the depression content, including self-treatment of depression.

The present project will design and produce an interactive media intervention program to assist persons manage real, ongoing conflicts on long-duration missions. A preliminary evaluation of the conflict intervention will be conducted in a variety of settings where individuals live, train and work together: fire departments and university residence halls. It will also be evaluated in two NSBRI-supported mission simulations when conflicts arise. The goal of this preliminary evaluation is to gather data on response rate, sample characteristics and effect size, in preparation for a randomized, controlled trial.

Project Description
NASA Task Book Entry