Part 1 (Decision Making and Situational Awareness) Chapter 5: Situational Awareness Research

Question 1

The Author Richard Gasaway has a doctorate degree in

Answer 1

Philosophy

Question 2

Gasaways study used expert-level decision makers. He narrowly focused on __________ as his subject group and _________________ as his operational environment

Answer 2

Fireground commanders

residential dwelling fire scenes

Question 3

The barriers to situational awareness for high stress/consequence decision makers are ______

Answer 3

universal

Question 4

Gasaway chose expert-level commanders vs novice level commanders because they

Answer 4

make decisions very differnetly

Question 5

He chose residential dwelling fires because they account for the highest number of

Answer 5

1st responder casualties

Question 6

Commanders who participated in Gasaways study were required to meet minimum criteria for training and experience. The participants, on average had ___ years of emergency service experience. The average time as an officer was 13 years and they averaged 11 years as command level decision makers. The participants on average has supervised 105 residential dwelling fires.

Answer 6

20

Question 7

Gasaway compiled a list of potential barriers that could challenge a decision makers situational awareness that had ______ potential barriers

Answer 7

116

Question 8

The method Gasaway chose to vet down the list of potential barriers was called the ________. Each participant had to rank barriers and place them in the appropriate box. The moderate and mild barriers were thrown out and the experiment was repeated until he had the top 3 cards. The final result was barriers parsed into 12 categories

Answer 8

Multiple cars and sort technique

Question 9

Interviews were coded. Coding entailed reading each line of the transcript to find instances where the decision maker mentioned any other barrier on the list. Gasaway learned that participants identified new situational awareness barriers that he had not previously discovered. He also discovered that decision makers could be impacted by ____ barriers simultaneously

Answer 9

multiple

Question 10

The correlation between barriers (the cause and effect of one barrier to another) was _____

Answer 10

not evaluated in his study

Question 11

There are 12 situational awareness barrier categories and they are

Answer 11

• staffing
• communications
• data and information management
• workload management
• mental model
• physical and mental stress
• commander location
• shared sense making
• goals and mission
• command support
• human factors
• attention management