4. An extensive battery of psychological data could be obtained on each 

 aquanaut prior to his inission--an unusual situation in field research. 



5. The natural situation provided excellent objective criteria of per- 

 formance and adjustment. These variables form the criteria for prediction of 

 individual reactions and the study of trends in behavior over time. Between 

 four and six thousand observations (depending on mission length) were taken on 

 each of the criterion variables on each aquanaut. 



6. It is impossible to gather such comprehensive and detailed information 

 on astronauts in space. 



Offsetting some of the desirable characteristics noted above are several dis- 

 advantages. The number of subjects (48) and missions (10) is relatively small. 

 A large sample with more replications would give broader and more stable data. 



The TEKTITE habitat was fairly shallow and was located in warm, clear water; 

 as a result, the stress levels were less extreme than those found in projects 

 such as SEALAB II and III. The shallow depth also made it more difficult to 

 maintain isolation. A larger sample of female aquanauts and mixed crews would 

 have enabled better evaluation of the obtained results. Only additional 

 research will show how well the findings based on this sample of volunteer sci- 

 entists and engineers will generalize to other situations and populations. 



Overall, however, the advantages clearly seem to outweigh the limitations of 

 such research and the methodology developed should be applicable to many 

 settings . 



Scope of the Report 



Time and space limitations make it impossible to present more than a fraction 

 of the data in this report. The concentration here will be on a general 

 description of some of the major findings. The areas to be emphasized will be 

 (1) overall behavior in the habitat, (2) team and individual differences in 

 reactions, (3) trends in behavior over time, (4) crew composition, and (5) pre- 

 diction of behavior. 



Topics for Subsequent Analysis 



It may be useful to list here aspects of the data which will be the subject of 

 later analyses and will be reported in more detailed technical reports. These 

 include: 



1. Habitat utilization. 



2. Territorial behavior. 



3. Diving behavior 



4. Meal behavior 



5. Communications (including within-habitat and habitat-to-surface 

 communication) . 



VIII-17 



