[rats404]

I guess perhaps this is a learning experience for the student, at least to some degree (excuse the pun). If this study was to come from a professional and experienced researcher, my expectations would be very different. As it is, I'm happy to support this young person by doing my best to take part.

I'm curious as to the level of due diligence expected from those mentoring and supporting the student on basic fundamentals such as "Using spellcheck is not the same as proofreading".

I could be unrealistic in expecting someone in a mentoring or coaching capacity to review the survey before we were contacted.

[Paul_Sengupta]

It seems every time there are some who respond and many others who are put off because the questions are poorly phrased or lacking the context required for pilots to relate them to real world scenarios.

I think what puts me off with these sorts of surveys are they my mind doesn't work very well with this style of question, whereas others may see it differently. The piloting world includes a broad spectrum of minds, but it does tend more towards those who need a more contextualised way of seeing things. I think partly some of us struggle because we're trying to second guess what the question setter is asking.

I find myself answering, "it depends" to all the questions as there could be a wide range of answers depending on multiple factors.

[GolfHotel]

I guess perhaps this is a learning experience for the student, at least to some degree (excuse the pun). If this study was to come from a professional and experienced researcher, my expectations would be very different. As it is, I'm happy to support this young person by doing my best to take part.

I'm curious as to the level of due diligence expected from those mentoring and supporting the student on basic fundamentals such as "Using spellcheck is not the same as proofreading".

I could be unrealistic in expecting someone in a mentoring or coaching capacity to review the survey before we were contacted.

With respect to the last sentence. There is a difficulty in when will the work cease to be that of the student and become that of the mentor/supervisor?

Questions like "I become bored with flying quickly" would be much better (IMHO) as "while flying as PIC I quickly become bored." But who knows what the original question was before mentor input?

I can't help wondering if the question about being distracted by noise is very relevant to flying? Has it come from another survey that has been copied? I feel I would quickly be distracted by engine noise from a second engine, as I fly a single. I'd like to think that I would be distracted by the sound of a gear warning horn as well. But evidence shows I might be wrong on that one. I'm struggling to think of a sound that should not attract my attention.

Having said that, and despite agreeing with @Paul_Sengupta comment that "it depends" I have completed the survey.

[ChampChump]

Several of my answers had 'It depends..' in the comments.

Without those comments I could say Maybe or Possibly (I couldn't discern the difference but there was one, evidently) to several questions & my attitude to risk may appear rather more cavalier than I intend.

Still, it's another set of answers.

[DRirwin]

Firstly, thanks very much to all those who have completed the survey thus far, all efforts greatly appreciated! We have got some really excellent data so Nejc is going to have a great time running his analysis once we have the sample. Nejc is a very keen and capable UG student, so its really great that so many of you are taking the time out to help him out - very much appreciated and I hope more people will continue to do so.

Next some context on the timeline for a project of this sort - the students have approximately 6-8 weeks to design a project (whilst also doing all their other degree work), get it approved from an ethical standpoint, prepare the materials and start recruiting participants. The main focus of my supervision across all 8 of my UG projects is that the research questions are valid and that the data collected will be useful. Both Nejc and I checked over the survey before sending it out, but human frailties being what they are I am not entirely surprised that a few typos got through - I can only apologise and seek to rectify any identified issues via the online system (which I should get time to do tomorrow).

In terms of the initial survey items related to situation awareness, sadly there are not a huge number of self-report questionnaires available for SA, the one we used has been previously validated in industry, and we sought to adapt it to aviation here. When using a pre-validated tool it is acceptable to adapt the questions, but not to change them significantly - as such it appears that a few are perhaps not entirely suited to aviation. This may be a little frustrating for participants but will actually help us to further edit and improve this tool for use in the aviation context - so all points related to that aspect of the survey are gratefully received and will be actioned for further study. Your help on this should continue to improve surveys from us.

Nejc plans to come on here to tell you more about the scenarios provided and why they are purposively short and a bit vague, but suffice it to say that we don't want to lead or overly bias your answers - different perspectives and different approaches are really important for the research, and we want to enable everyone to get across their own point of view.

Anyway I don't want to ramble on, I hope that helps answer a few of your questions - I will leave the rest of the responses to Nejc as the lead researcher, please be gentle with him as I would like him to be encouraged rather than discouraged

[Nejc900]

Hi all, I've just noticed the reply by Dr. Irwin, so there is a bit of an overlap in my response, but also a few new points. It's a bit long but the 3 parts relate to the grammatical errors, 1st block of questions and the scenarios.

First of all in relation to the grammatical error in the first question, accurately pointed out by Maxthelion, I can only apologize. The whole thing was proof read, however obviously not well enough. Before posting the questionnaire, I had 3 very slightly different versions of the questionnaire on my computer, so it is likely the wrong one was submitted with no later checks picking up on the error. The mistake should be fixed by tomorrow.

Secondly, the comments relating to the first part of the question block, specifically the “distracted by noise”. I agree that in the cockpit, especially GA, a question like this is odd and fully accept the comments on it. Someone pointed out that the questions were likely copied from another study, and to some extant that is accurate. All the questions in that block were adapted from a different study investigating Situational Awareness in off-shore rig workers. The reason why this questionnaire was used, was due to most techniques of assessing Situational Awareness being lab based (ie. Scenarios in a simulator), which is way above budget for a thesis project. In order to keep the relative validity and reliability of the questionnaire, very small changes are allowed which leads to questions that don’t seem to quite fit. This is a weakness of the current study and I will be critiquing the use of the set of questions in my written paper, with consideration to all the comments posted about them.

Lastly, in regards to the scenarios and “It depends”. I know exactly what you are talking about and while coming up with the scenarios; I couldn’t help but feel the same way. The major issue with adding more contexts however is that you are also adding more possible variables that may affect the response. So for example, the addition of “preparing for a flight with friends” adds the variable of passengers, which is likely to significantly affect the answers. There is also a consideration of how long participants will want to spend on the questionnaire. Presenting paragraph long scenarios, adding more contexts and elaborating on many areas, while giving the participant a better opportunity to answer the question accurately, it is also likely to result in higher levels of attrition, resulting in lower number of participants. Finally, the response of “it depends” is actually what we sort of wanted to see. We are aware that one/two sentence long scenarios will not give you enough detail to make an informed decision, however it gives you enough detail to identify the possible risks involved in such a scenario. Therefore, a response of “it depends on x, y and z” gives me enough data to say that this participant was able to identify the risks involved and is already considering other variables that would be affecting the ultimate decision.

Again, I appreciate where all the comments are coming from and I know that having more developed and context rich scenarios would be more interesting to answer, however it ultimately wouldn’t be measuring the same concepts as we are trying to measure here. Hopefully this answers some of the questions and critiques and I’m open to receiving more feedback, as any critique/idea you have is incredibly useful to me (and researchers in general) in developing future studies and improvements.

Thank you to everyone who has completed the questionnaire!

[Maxthelion]

Fine, I'm in. It's refreshing that Nejc is so clearly aware of the limitations of the survey and is prepared to discuss them in such an erudite and engaging way. I'll do the survey today.

[Dave W]

Nejc900 posted an update yesterday as a separate thread. Due to finger-trouble I have managed to fail to merge with this thread, so here it is as a quote under my own username:

Hi all! First of all I'd like to thank everyone that has so far completed this questionnaire, previously posted by Dr. Irwin. I'm reposting this invite as we are still a few participants short, but very close to meeting our target sample. As such I'd like to extend an invite to anyone who's not yet completed the questionnaire. Any additional input at this stage would be greatly appreciated and would be very valuable in enabling us to obtain the most accurate, and thus meaningful, findings.

Below is the invite, with the link to the questionnaire:

Looking for UK based General Aviation Pilots!

We are looking for General Aviation pilots, based in the UK, to participate in a study investigating Situational Awareness and Risk Perception.

In order to participate you have to hold at least a Private Pilots Licence (PPL) and have flown GA at least once in the last year. The questionnaire should take between 20 and 30 minutes and in it you will be asked to fill in a measure of situation awareness and respond to a series of scenarios. All data will be held anonymously, you may skip any question and you are able to withdraw from the study at any point by closing the window.

If you wish to ask any questions about the study prior to participation you can contact Nejc Sedlar (nejc.sedlar.15@aberdeen.ac.uk) or Dr Irwin (a.irwin@abdn.ac.uk) via email.

The link to the questionnaire: http://viis.abdn.ac.uk/snapwebhost/s.asp?k=153934902633

Thank You!

[TopCat]

I've filled it in too. Many of my answers were in the middle of the would/wouldn't band, since, as others have commented, it's often 'it depends'.

[Crash one]

Filled it in. Many of the scenarios might depend on the type of aircraft/flying, as if it is not your own.
For instance. I can fly my aircraft perfectly safely without a working airspeed indicator, which may seem somewhat cavalier. I wouldn’t do it in a strange aircraft.

[mikehallam]

O.K. But the questions do ask for your comments & space provided. Thus it's excellent in that respect and wrt ASI yes/no, well the variation in responses is shirley the sort of stat. the poor guy's aiming to get for distribution curves, skew, deciles etc..
mike hallam.

[Crash one]

I did comment on all of the scenarios, based on my own aircraft. If I flew a hired or a group owned aircraft I would have answered differently. Probably more towards the “no I wouldn’t fly” direction.

[Gertie]

"Distracted by background noise"

Does that relate to working in an office or flying in a piston single? What background noise do you possibly get in a piston single?

Babies and parents screaming at each other in the back seat is the only one I can think of. If I were ever to take such passengers I'd remind myself where the "disconnect the back seats from the intercom" button was, job done.

[flybymike]

It’s the ordinary screaming passengers in all the seats that distract me......

[Lefty]

I too found that the answer to most of the questions was “it depends”.

I then gave examples of the scenarios when I would, and when I wouldn’t, fly.