a subfield of human factors psychology concerned with identifying the psychological principles that govern human interaction with environments, systems, and products and applying these principles to issues of engineering and design. Engineering psychologists may consult with architects and designers of various industrial and consumer products (e.g., airplanes, automobiles, home appliances, electronics and software applications) while specializing in such areas as ergonomics, human–computer interaction, or usability engineering. Engineering psychology is often used synonymously with human factors engineering. See also equipment design; human engineering; tool design; workspace design.
a type of sampling process in which all the members of a population are listed and then some objective, orderly procedure is applied to randomly choose specific cases. For example, the population might be listed alphabetically and every seventh case selected. Also called quasirandom sampling; systematic random sampling.