DEBRIEF: CULTURE AND NON-TECHNICAL SKILLS

Thank you for your time!

Culture plays an important role in people's safety behaviours but has received relatively little empirical attention in the literature on helicopter operations. The importance of input factors related to culture on crew and mission performance is illustrated in Helmreich's model of team performance, derived from investigations into pilot performance in aviation. Professional, national and organisational cultures are underlined as vital input factors in the model, affecting performance functions and outcomes. At this time, the model is becoming more relevant in rotary wing aviation with multinational organisations employing people of various professional backgrounds and national cultures, who have to work together.

We aimed to examine to what extent specific non-technical skills are perceived to be affected by culture (national vs. professional) and in what way.

In this study you were asked to rate to what extent a culture type impacts on a specific non-technical skill and to provide examples/justification of your response.

The anonymous data gathered in the study will be kept on a password protected PC.

Please ask any questions you might have or discuss any concerns with Ms Anna Kaminska (postgraduate researcher) or Dr Amy Irwin (supervisor) in the School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen by emailing a.kaminska.19@abdn.ac.uk (Anna) or a.irwin@abdn.ac.uk (Amy).

Thank you again for taking time to participate in our study!