[Chris Martyr]

It looks like they've taken a pretty bog standard questionnaire and then just adapted it to fit to an aviation scenario.
Several of the questions asked gave me the distinct impression that they were definitely not set by anyone with any aviation credentials , or were perhaps based on things they had read , or from the findings of an experience flight.

I filled in most of the questions. Even some of the daft ones.

[Ian Melville]

I completed it to the end, but doubt it has much value. Why rank risk out of 100, and enter it into a free text field? Option buttons for 1 to 10 would have been good enough, and easier to process in reports.

GH: The statement didn't tell me anything new.

[Siouxsie Taylor]

Q13 has no 'agree' option.....

Thank you very much for taking the time to complete the questionnaire and for pointing this out, an agree option will be added.

[zlhglp]

I'd agree that some of the questions seem perhaps a little odd, and some of them simply aren't answerable if you fly a single-seater VFR only. A 'not applicable' choice would sometimes have been useful. I left quite a lot blank. I'd be more specific if I could see the questions again!

[Siouxsie Taylor]

Thank you to everyone who has completed the questionnaire so far and for providing feedback on various aspects of the questionnaire. The questionnaire is composed of pre-validated measures which have used in previous psychological research. The following changes have been made:
A N/A option has been added to the teamwork and co-operation section
A descriptive sentence has been added to the decision making section to make it clear we are assessing overall decision making style
Changed VMC to 3.1miles
.

[Ben K]

Section 5's questions; the answers depend hugely on the associated conditions, which aren't specified.

For example;

"At night, fly from your local airport to another airport about 150 miles away, in a well-maintained aircraft, when the weather is marginal VFR (3.1 miles visibility and 2,000 foot overcast):"

If i tried to do that in a well maintained C150 with basic instruments, to another airport equipped only with runway lights, it'd be a helluva lot more risky than doing the exact same flight under the same conditions, but in a well maintained deiced well equipped light twin, to an airport with full ATC and IAPs.

[Maxthelion]

I think the questionnaire assumes that the majority of GA recreational pilots are night rated when most of us (myself included) are not.

[Dave_Ett]

I did it and answered every question I felt I could.

Some good feedback on here, and clearly an enormous amount of experience within the forum users.

Maybe we can come up with a better set of questions?

[Siouxsie Taylor]

I did it and answered every question I felt I could.

Some good feedback on here, and clearly an enormous amount of experience within the forum users.

Maybe we can come up with a better set of questions?

Creating a questionnaire is a lengthy process and when we are creating a questionnaire we have to use measures which have been pre-validated and used in previous research to ensure that the questions we ask are reliable and valid to ensure they measure what they are supposed to be testing. This also allows us to compare our findings to that of previous research.
Human factors researchers are willing to collaborate with people in industry and we are always open to receiving suggestions to improve measures for use in future research.

[VRB_20kt]

Pre-validation? Do you mean that they've been used elsewhere so you can make apparently meaningful comparisons?

The challenge of writing questionnaires about risk for GA is that we are a particularly diverse bunch. There are pilots with 20,000 hours and there are pilots with 50 hours. There are single-engined or multi-engined aircraft. There are aircraft that can only legally fly in daylight and VMC through to pressurised, de-iced aircraft that are designed to get there almost whatever the conditions. The plane I fly will happily glide about five miles for every thousand feet of altitude, others (as mentioned) have a gliding performance akin to a brick.

With so much diversity, to get meaningful results you need to have some sort of basis on which the questions are being answered. You could use a fixed foundation (eg PPL, IMC-rated with n-hundred hours flying a single-engined aircraft with good instrumentation) or you could ask questions that elicited a foundation (How many hours? What additional ratings? What aircraft? How well kitted out?). I fear that without that starting point the information that you gather will not actually be significant.

[Lefty]

From the comments above, it would seem that many of the more experienced PPL's have concluded that the survey does not adequately reflect the differences between a person with 50 hours - or 10,000 hours, and between a motor glider and a well equipped high performance well aircraft - and have therefore elected to not complete the survey. This means that the results are likely to reflect the views and risk appetites of the less experienced pilots - and will therefore not be representative of the pilot population as a whole. I would suggest that if it is not representative - then it is a waste of time??

[riverrock]

As I said earlier - a lot of the decision making questions sound generic. If you apply them to a multi-pilot cockpit situation, or to home life when you have a partner, you'll get a different answer than if you compare it to needing to make a decision in the air when single pilot or living alone.
Comparison to groups of non-pilots wouldn't be comparing like with like.

Risk management and decision making are both very important, but there are lots of factors that will go into any decision. Without capturing those factors, you aren't going to get meaningful data. Factors could include experience, qualifications, equipment, training, whether risk is to self or others.

[Siouxsie Taylor]

The following is posted on the behalf of Dr Amy Irwin:
Dear All,
Thank-you very much to all those who have completed the questionnaire and who have offered positive constructive feedback. Please remember that this is the first, exploratory, study in what will hopefully be a new avenue of research. The majority of research in this area has focused on commercial aviation, and we are keen to extend the same courtesy to general aviation! Your feedback will be taken on board when considering the next study, but in the meantime I thought it might be useful to answer some of the points raised:

· When we say ‘pre-validation’ we mean that when assessing an underlying construct the individual items have to be used multiple times, with different samples, in order to ensure that when the items are analysed using factor analysis and tests of reliability, the items are all measuring the same thing (the underlying factor or construct). None of the items are assessed individually, in each case items are summed to assess an underlying factor – it’s part of the reason that some might seem repetitive or slightly incongruous – checks and balances require that some questions are asked twice to ensure we get the same response each time, and others are a little unusual to prevent acquiescence bias.
· Several of you mentioned the variability of GA pilots – that is part of the reason we asked for experience, usual hours flying, training etc. at the start. Answers will be separated into groups according to experience level, training etc. so we can assess if those factors influence the pattern of responses using a variety of analyses. You can therefore answer the risk questions on the basis of your own training and skill level, and your usual aircraft – we will use the information provided at the start to determine the level of risk aversion / tolerance. The sheer variability in these answers means that we may well be more specific, or separate pilots into more defined categories, going forward. But in this case what we really want is to get some kind of baseline on which to build further research.
· Finally, there was some concern over the standard info – debrief format. Essentially not all information is shared at the start in an effort to not influence your answers – the only missing information relates to the constructs studied and what the exact research question is (e.g. what our expectations are). Those are stated in the debrief at the end.

Please do continue to comment and provide suggestions, just please bear in mind that this research is in it’s infancy – and its only through people engaging with the research that we can move forward and begin to bring research within general aviation up to the levels of commercial aviation.
Kind regards,
Dr Amy Irwin

[GolfHotel]

An interesting reply above. I'm still happy that I did not complete it as the above did not address the concerns I had.

I will be interested to see the results that do come out and see if they seem representative. I hope they will be and welcome the idea of research in this area.

[Chris Martyr]

I believe that Siouxsie and Dr Irwin may just benefit from taking a visit to ;
http://www.plainenglish.co.uk
prior to their next 'construct'. Or is that a big 'ask'.