Coincidence Between the Scientific and Folk Uses of the Term “Situation(al) Awareness” in Aviation Incident Reports

Abstract

A total of 81,378 reports from the Aviation Safety Reporting System were analyzed to determine if discrepancies appear to exist between the folk use of the term situation(al) awareness, as reflected in the use of the term by pilots and controllers when reporting incidents, and the scientific use of the term, as reflected by prior research. In all, 1,151 (1.4%) reports were identified as citing situation(al) awareness in the narrative portion of the records. This represents a surprisingly large discrepancy between the prevalence of the use of the term situational awareness in incidents and what one might expect from the literature. Inconsistencies were also found for the impact of experience on situation awareness. The effects of workload and perceptual conditions were consistent between this and other empirical studies. These findings suggest that differences do exist between the folk use of the term situation(al) awareness and the scientific use, with implications for understanding and measuring situation awareness.