Human Systems/Subsystems Research: Application of the Critical Incident Technique to Enhance CRM Training

The goal of the proposed research is to demonstrate the usefulness of the critical incident technique for enhancing the effectiveness of the Air Force's CRM training programs. This will be achieved by collecting a large number of critical incidents from Air Force aircrews reflecting effective, ineffective, and average levels of individual CRM performance. In addition, because it is the performance of an entire aircrew that results in flight safety and effective mission performance, we will explore the usefulness of collecting critical incidents of team or aircrew performance. Once we have collected these CRM-related critical incidents, an important step will be the "retranslation" of these incidents in order to obtain information about their effectiveness and the dimensions that underlie performance in the CRM parts of aircrew jobs. Finally, in order to more clearly demonstrate the usefulness of these critical incidents for developing CRM training tools, we will develop a behavior-based rating scale targeted at one of the CRM performance dimensions identified as part of the critical incident analysis. A set of such rating scales could be used to measure performance before, during, and after training, and thus would be useful both for training needs assessment and for training evaluation.