An Empirical Investigation into the Prevalence and Impacts of Complicating Environmental Factors in Published Interfaces / IJAA Projects

Previous research describes 10 contextual complications that exist in the application of applying analytical models and how they impact the models and modeling approaches themselves. These complications are pervasive and, because they affect the constructs of the modeler, must be better understood by practitioners who implement such models and researchers in order to increase the robustness, appropriateness, and usefulness of the models themselves. This research surveys the extent of the presence of these factors and the extent to which they affected modeling efforts in 76 different published applications via an author survey. It finds that the factors are pervasive and their importance to the appropriateness and success of the modeling efforts is high. Further, it finds a strong interaction factor between them, with underlying business and project constructs on which the factors align. As a result, it seems that a line of research geared toward identifying and overcoming these factors would aid in the application of analytical models and demonstrate the applied value of the profession. For practitioners, it is of high value to be aware of and consider these contextual factors when implementing models in order to improve their probability of success.