Gordon Weller

Information processing and intuitive decision-making on the fireground: towards a model of expert intuition

AbstractIn addition to other cognitive tasks that need attending to, experienced fireground commanders are also faced with a crucial task of identifying various environmental and informational cues that could affect their performance on the fireground. Although these cues play a crucial role in activating the pattern recognition or intuitive decision-making process, the major challenge remains that they usually emerge from multiple sources, thereby increasing the cognitive load in working memory. Previous studies have shown that attending to multiple informational sources has serious implications for intuitive decision-making as it then becomes more difficult to select the most relevant cues amidst the rapidly evolving conditions. In order to determine how firefighters cope with this difficult task of processing information from multiple sources, 16 experienced fireground commanders were interviewed using a semi-structured critical decision method protocol. Following the insights derived from the knowledge elicitation process, this paper presents and describes an expert intuition model, which we termed the information filtering and intuitive decision-making model. The model attempts to conceptualize how experienced firefighters scan through multiple information sources from which they are then able to select the most relevant cues that eventually aid the development of workable action plans.

Eliciting experts’ knowledge in emergency response organizations

Purpose – Experienced fire ground commanders are known to make decisions in time-pressured and dynamic environments. The purpose of this paper is to report some of the tacit knowledge and skills expert firefighters use in performing complex fire ground tasks. Design/methodology/approach – This study utilized a structured knowledge elicitation tool, known as the critical decision method (CDM), to elicit expert knowledge. Totally, 17 experienced firefighters were interviewed in-depth using a semi-structured CDM interview protocol. The CDM protocol was analysed using the emergent themes analysis approach. Findings – Findings from the CDM protocol reveal both the salient cues sought, which the authors termed critical cue inventory (CCI), and the goals pursued by the fire ground commanders at each decision point. The CCI is categorized into five classes based on the type of information each cue generates to the incident commanders. Practical implications – Since the CDM is a useful tool for identifying trainin...

Towards the classification of fireground cues: a qualitative analysis of expert reports

Whilst there is evidence linking informational cue processing ability to effective decision making on the fireground, only a few studies have actually attempted detailed description and categorization of the cues sought by fireground commanders when managing real fires. In this study, thirty experienced firefighters were interviewed across various fire stations in the UK and Nigeria using the critical decision method protocol. Forty one different cues were identified, which were then categorized into five distinct types namely: safety cues, cues that indicate the nature of problem, environmental cues, emotive cues, and incident command and control cues. The paper concludes by evaluating the role of expertise in cue utilization, drawing on evidence from the naturalistic decision making (NDM) literature.

Evaluating lay perceptions of maternal mortality to improve risk communication: a case study in Rivers State, Nigeria

ABSTRACT Maternal mortality is one of the major challenges in reproductive health in Nigeria. Approximately two-thirds of the women (three quarters in rural Nigeria) deliver their babies outside of health facilities and without medically skilled birth attendants. Communication and education are vital since so many births take place outside formal health care environments, and the high mortality rate suggests there is potential for progress, which can supplement Nigerian government efforts. The purpose of the study was to elicit lay knowledge and interpretations about the major components of the problem as part of a wider mental models study aimed at improving risk communication. These knowledge and perceptions were elicited through semi-structured interviews with women of childbearing age (15–49 years). Interviews were analysed to evaluate common themes that will be used to model lay perceptions for comparison to the expert mental model as part of the wider method. The emergent themes will be presented and discussed in the context of the identification of important gaps in knowledge and misperceptions that have the potential for development of improved risk communication.

What is constructionism? Navigating its use in sociology

the most effective way of capturing participants’ viewpoints, which involves the gathering of post-sorting information. This process can be conducted in the form of an interview, asking participants to talk about the personal meaning and significance of each item. In Chapters 5 and 6, Watt and Stenner describe the technical and practical issues involved in conducting a Q-methodological factor analysis and in achieving an effective factor solution. This means the researcher decides what is the best solution in a particular context, using available data and in relation to the aims and objectives. The Q-analysis can run using IBM SPSS statistics or most other generic software packages supporting statistical analysis. The act of physically examining data can be conducted by employing data rotation. Unrotated factor loading is used for mapping the relative positions or viewpoints of all the Q-sorts in a study. Following the factor extraction, the only way to understand the data is through the few key points made available by the extracted factor. Finally, to interpret a factor thoroughly and in keeping with the methodological holism, a Q-methodologist should be able to explain the entire item configuration captured in a relevant factor array. In this spirit, Chapters 7 and 8 cover the interpretation section. Chapter 7 offers a step-by-step type of interpretation in terms of the ability to explain or account for the entire item configuration captured in the relevant factor array. Chapter 8 concludes the book by providing advice on how to make sound Q-methodological papers. Although Watt and Stenner explain the process of Q-methodology in a clear and straightforward manner, they leave us wondering how to use it, for example, in subjects related to Political Science, International Relations and Economics. Drawing on difficult statistical concepts, an in-depth step-by-step analysis requires examples from different disciplines, which is helpful for beginners in understanding the method thoroughly. Watt and Stenner provide a simple yet comprehensive approach to Q-methodology and their book would be useful to the Q-community: students, academicians and researchers interested in using the Q-method for the first time and wish to expand their Q-methodological understanding.

Environmental social science: human–environment interactions and sustainability

Studies that address the human dimensions of global environmental change face the stark reality that the target of research – overlapping social and ecological processes – cannot be tidily packaged. Environmental Social Science offers a succinct and compelling platform for uniting interdisciplinary research methods for needed work in sustainability science. The structure of Emilio Moran’s book reveals something of its aims. It begins by introducing the problematique of research on human–environment interactions, with particular attention to global environmental challenges (Chapter 1). Next it surveys theories and concepts from the social and biological sciences and the dimensions of the human–environment relationship that each has methods for addressing (Chapters 2–4). This sets up a transition into methodological approaches that are spatially explicit. The spatial turn (detailed further below) provides context for methodological approaches that are multiscale, multitemporal and which may link social and ecological systems analysis to the agency of decision-makers (Chapters 5 and 6). The book concludes by focusing on how institutional analysis of collective action problems is pivotal for understanding human dimensions of global environmental change (Chapter 7). It concludes by outlining future directions for the emerging field of sustainability science (Chapter 8). A key contribution of Moran’s work turns on the utility and suitability of using spatial analysis to integrate multiple research domains. Spatial analysis is defined by Moran (p. 72) as ‘... a set of methods whose results are not invariant under changes in the locations of the objects of analysis.’ In context, this definition seeks to unite several dimensions of social science (i.e. place and custom) with those of physical science (i.e. land-cover change and biocomplexity). Thought of spatially, a critical methodological component of sustainability science is an ability to characterize the nature and extent of observable change and to link those ‘objects of analysis’ to human agency. The link can be thought of in two ways. One is historical, where landscape patterns observed over time are connected to livelihood strategies, political economy, or ecological events (i.e. drought). The other is speculative, where forecasts are generated using agent-based models – with agents in the model behaving according to rules that feed back into subsequent decisions – that provide a planning support tool for estimating the likely effects of different policy paths. While the spatial emphasis is designed to capture change across systems, the heavy methodological lifting in Moran’s work is accomplished by approaches that allow for comparisons of human–environment interaction across scales and over time. With respect to both multiscale and multitemporal research, Moran emphasizes the methodological tools of geographic information systems/science and International Journal of Social Research Methodology Vol. 15, No. 5, September 2012, 445–450

Calendar and time diary methods in life course research

As someone new to the study of time diaries (and, by implication, time-space budgets, a further variant on researching how and where people spend their time), I found this book a real gem. Time diaries are research instruments which encourage respondents to report, in sequence, the activities that they undertook during a specified period of time; they often collect information relating to where the activities took place, who else was there and additional information about the nature of the place or activity. The book is logically ordered in terms of the topics covered in each chapter. The chapters (17 in total) are grouped into five parts, preceded by an overview written by the editors of the various applications of calendar and time diary methods as used by social scientists in the collection of life course data. Part 1 (Foundations) comprises two chapters on ‘data collection and analysis’ and ‘calendar interviewing’, respectively. The book moves onto discuss through the next four chapters the emergence and application of calendar, diary and time use methodologies in different research arenas (Part II), and the ‘tweaks’ needed to make these approaches work. Chapters in Part III address data quality assessment of calendar and diary instruments. Methodological issues surrounding reliability and validity are discussed in the chapters in Part IV, before the book concludes (Part V) with a glimpse into the future of these techniques. Each of these parts ends with a short section of further thoughts, which helps to locate the foregoing chapters into the wider literature. Numerous areas of social life have been explored using such techniques, and the chapters in this collection draw from studies on substance use, adolescent health, exposure to stress, domestic violence, hedonistic experiences, the school environment, ageing and epidemiology. Somewhat to my surprise, there is little on qualitative data in this collection – much of the text is devoted to discussions of data which is quantitative in nature (and indeed time use is now a major feature of several large-scale national-level surveys in the USA and Europe). Of course, because of the focus on time as a key variable, there is always a tendency for researchers to need to quantify things; even if one just asks about what was done on one day and even if one used hours as the unit of time, each respondent generates 24 observations for any one day. Fifty respondents would generate 1200 observations, hence the reliance on quantitative data analyses, I suspect. However, qualitative data with all of its nuances and intricacies provide another way into understanding how, where and in the pursuit of what, people spend their time. This omission is not glaring – since I suspect that many reading this excellent book will come from the quantitative tradition in the social sciences – but it does suggest a body of work which could benefit from a International Journal of Social Research Methodology Vol. 15, No. 3, May 2012, 255–258