The research and evaluation of serious games: Toward a comprehensive methodology

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p> The authors present the methodological background to and underlying research design of an ongoing research project on the scientific evaluation of serious games and/or computer‐based simulation games (SGs) for advanced learning. The main research questions are: (1) what are the requirements and design principles for a comprehensive social scientific methodology for the evaluation of <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SGs</jats:styled-content> ?; (2) to what extent do <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SGs</jats:styled-content> contribute to advanced learning?; (3) what factors contribute to or determine this learning?; and (4) to what extent and under what conditions can <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SG</jats:styled-content> ‐based learning be transferred to the real world? In the <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">N</jats:styled-content> etherlands between 2005 and 2012, several hundred <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SG</jats:styled-content> sessions with 12 <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SGs</jats:styled-content> were evaluated systematically, uniformly and quantitatively to create a dataset, which comprises data on 2488 respondents in higher education or work organizations. The authors present the research model, the quasi‐experimental design and the evaluation instruments. This focus in this paper is on the methodology and dataset, which form a sound foundation for forthcoming publications on the empirical results. </jats:p>