title: The impact of life events on pilots: an extension of Alkov's approach.
abstract: Recent psychological thinking has expressed dissatisfaction with life events/life changes research. The cornerstone of such research in aviation studies is the work of Alkov. We adapted Alkov's approach and used it to see if we could extend our understanding of the mechanisms involved in the life events/accident and incident relationship. Alkov's 22-item questionnaire was expanded and administered by post as part of a much larger study. Replies were received from 442 commercial pilots working for British companies. Multivariate analysis revealed that the pilots merely regarded the 22 items as comprising three trends--Emotional Losses, Pilot Characteristics, and Emotional Gains. The overall conclusion proposes that, while Alkov's approach is interesting, expansion of it reveals that background contextual factors should be examined. Additionally, pilots' perception of the effects of life events on accident/incident potential is made on relatively broad discriminations, rather than on finely tuned judgements.
mesh_terms: D000057:Accident Proneness; D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D000337:Aerospace Medicine; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires