CyberStudies: Lessons from the Trenches

Many individuals suffer from anxiety, stress, and depression and those serving in the U.S. military are no exception. Warfighters keep returning from theater with combat stress. Several of these military service members are also technology oriented and tend to prefer performing their daily life activities with and/or near computerized systems. Fortunately, some researchers specialize in helping warfighters via gaming or virtual reality technologies. Nevertheless, a dearth of literature is published about challenges researchers face when conducting these types of studies. This article shares the experiences of a research team, under a uniformed Army Research Psychologist (Stetz), who runs research studies (a) with warfighters, (b) with technological equipment, and (c) in nonstandard laboratory settings.