Developing a context-general self-report approach to measure three-level situation awareness

Background: Situation awareness (SA) is considered to be crucial for work in safety critical organisations, yet its precise definition and an agreed upon measurement approach have yet to emerge. SA is often measured as an operator's overview of some specific parameters within a given work setting and a given time frame, an approach that entails both advantages and disadvantages. The current approach examines whether some aspects of SA relating to workplace safety can also be captured in a context-general inventory. Material and methods: 166 offshore maritime personnel answered the SA inventory with 13 items describing the respondent's typical cognitions concerning safety issues. Results: Confirmatory factor analysis of response patterns showed that the internal pattern among the items reflected the three level structure predicted by the leading theoretical model. Strengths and weaknesses of the inventory itself, as well as the approach in general are discussed, and future research directions are outlined. Conclusions: It appears feasible to measure aspects of SA in a context-general inventory, though additional adjustment and validation is required.