Human factors play a large role in the creation and optimization of process safety in offshore drilling and well control operations by assessing and mitigating human error. The current industry practice relies on the simulation-based trainings for its drilling crews which lack the measurement and evaluation of human factors and non-technical skills. One way to improve training is to measure and evaluate an individual's performance and non-technical skills, but there are no such validated, psychological tools made for offshore drilling operation. A way to create these tools is with the use of the content analysis and process tracing techniques, which are frequently used in research to identify psychological processes via communication. This paper presents the potential use of content analysis as a tool to optimize simulation-based trainings that can be applied to improve human factors in drilling and well control activities. To put this to test, an interactive trip-in experiment was specially designed in the University of Oklahoma virtual reality drilling simulator that allowed four participants as assistant drillers (two Novices and two Experts) to individually engage in four similar simulations and communicate with a driller in a manner similar to a real-world setting. The results from content analysis were translated into semantic maps to explore individual psychological states which informs their cognitive processes (e.g. working memory, long-term memory, metacognition) used during the experiment. The research found significant differences in the problem-solving techniques for the Novices and the Experts meaning, that perhaps they approached the problem psychologically differently. Results are a proof of concept that content analysis is an additional tool that may allow for improved performance evaluation and human factors optimization through simulation-based trainings. (C) 2018 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.