| Given the growing concern in the civil aviation community about increased incidents of controlled flight into terrain (CFIT's) and the general acceptance of situation awareness (SA), or the lack thereof, as a contributing factor to such, the objective of the present study was to develop a subjective technique for measuring the SA of student (Ab Initio) civil pilots which would allow for its training. Both a framework for understanding and a method for measuring SA were derived in order to integrate formal theory with the understanding of pilots. Research was conducted over four phases. After an initial phase in which 28 elements considered constitutive of SA were generated by both a literature review and semi-structured interviews of pilots, these were validated in a second phase through the expert ratings of flight instructors and academic researchers. A Principal Components Analysis of the 22 remaining elements was then undertaken in a third phase, which rendered a six-factor core. The factor structure was found to be stable across phases of flight (i.e., departure, cruise, and arrival) and generalizable between groups (e.g., flight school students, air transport pilots). The usability of the scales was addressed in a fourth phase, where flight school instructors were asked to assess in-flight/in-simulator and post-flight/post-simulator applicability. This resulted in a final version of the Cranfield Situation Awareness Scale (Cranfield SAS) and a shortened prototype for in-flight and in-simulator use. The scales derived were 'Pilot Knowledge,' 'Anticipation and Understanding of Future Events,' 'Management of Stress, Effort, and Commitment,' 'Capacity to Perceive, Attend, Assimilate, and Assess Information,' and 'Overall Awareness'. A framework model for understanding SA was then proposed which would integrate the Person-Environment pit model of stress offered by French, Rodgers, and Cobb (1974) with Neisser's (1976) perceptual cycle in order to address the interaction of factors. Situation Awareness was said to be the 'operational space' within which personal and environmental factors affect performance. Recommendations for further research were also made. |
