| Crisis collaboration exercises are perceived as developing and testing cross-sectoral team integration, preparedness efforts, and response. However, the general problem is that crisis collaboration exercises may tend to produce results with limited usefulness in actual crisis work. The purpose of this quantitative, non-experimental, survey-based study was to examine to what extent there was a statistically significant relationship between participation in Norwegian maritime crisis collaboration exercises and perceived level of learning, and to what extent there was a statistically significant relationship between exercise participation and perceived usefulness in actual crisis. Surveys were electronically distributed among participants in three 2016 Norwegian maritime crisis collaboration exercises. This study found, with caution due to an achieved statistical power of .79, a moderately strong statistically significant relationship between participation in Norwegian maritime crisis collaboration exercises and perceived levels of learning and usefulness. However, it also discovered a need for greater emphasis on collaboration learning and usefulness. This study recommends adopting a national collaboration exercise framework that stresses collaboration development rather than the continuation of current practices in which exercise participants seem to concentrate exclusively on fulfilling their individual sector-specific and predefined exercise scripts. In addition, paying greater attention to the importance of joint evaluations following collaboration exercises will promote both learning and utility. Finally, it is also recommended that similar research studies be conducted to see whether this study's findings can be generalized to other national and international crisis work contexts. |
