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Measuring Change in Mental Models of Dynamic Systems: An Exploratory Study

ABSTRACT Measuring change in the mental models of the participants in systems thinking and system dynamics interventions is unavoidable if the relative effectiveness of different interventions in promoting learning is to be assessed. However, existing methods for organizing, representing, eliciting, and mapping mental models are designed primarily to facilitate change in mental models, rather than to measure change, and so new methodologies for measuring change in mental models are needed. This paper defines the necessary features of any methodology that aims to rigorously measure change in mental models of dynamic systems and describes the development and implementation of one specific new methodology designed to fulfill these criteria. An exploratory application of the method to a systems thinking intervention designed to change mental models of the causes of the economic long wave, or Kondratiev cycle, is also described. Results indicate that the intervention produced statistically reliable changes in the content and size of subjects’ mental models, as well as the degree of feedback thinking that they contained, but had no significant effect on the degree of detail complexity or dynamic complexity in subjects’ mental models. The method was able to capture even subtle changes in mental models due to the intervention, and it can be widely applied to answer important questions about the cognitive effects of alternate interventions. The limitations of the described work and suggestions for future research are discussed.