Evaluating the Decision Making Skills of General Aviation Pilots.

Abstract

An instrument consisting of 51 items was developed to assess pilot decision-making skill. Each item consisted of a stem, a short description of an aviation scenario requiring a decision on the part of the pilot. Four alternatives were provided, and subjects were instructed to rank order the alternatives from best to worst solution to the scenario presented. Rank-ordered judgments of a sample of 246 general aviation (GA) pilots (with an average of about 500 hours of total flying experience) were compared with the recommended solutions provided by an expert panel. Results indicated that, overall, GA pilots and an expert panel of pilots agreed in their judgments of the appropriate course of action in situations critical to flight safety. However, the degree of agreement of individual general aviation pilots with the recommended solutions varied widely. An index of agreement (Safety Deviation Index) was calculated that expressed the degree of agreement of individual GA pilots with the recommended solutions. Initial evaluation of this index indicates that it demonstrates adequate psychometric properties and that, as other research would suggest, it has little relationship with common demographic or flight experience measures.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 1998
Accession Number
ADA341118

Entities

People

  • Darryl K. Hand
  • John C. Quebe
  • Johnny J. Weissmuller
  • Walter E. Driskill

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accidents
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Airplanes
  • Aviation Accidents
  • Civil Aviation
  • Commercial Pilots
  • Data Analysis
  • Demography
  • Employment
  • Lessons Learned
  • Personnel Management
  • Pilots
  • Risk
  • Seat Belts
  • Statistics
  • United States

Readers

  • Aviation Science / Aeronautics.
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Instructional Design and Training Evaluation.