Steep ground working – interviews related to fatigue

FLS has a PhD student from Aberdeen University undertaking studies into fatigue, with a particular focus on those working on steep ground – this could be chokermen or those working machines on similar sites, including the winch. They are looking for people willing to be interviewed for up to an hour, completely anonymised, to talk about incidents or dangerous occurrences they’ve experienced and how they’ve overcome them.

Study Brief:

Sofia is a PhD student at Aberdeen University’s Applied Psychology and Human Factors Group. Her studies are looking at non-technical skills in Forestry, which include things like situational awareness, cognitive readiness, communication, planning, fatigue etc.

For the second part of her PhD project, she’ll be visiting worksites to conduct interviews with frontline workers; harvester- forwarder- and skyline operators primarily. This is an important step for developing the non-technical skill classification for forestry.

Interviews will usually take 45mins - 1 hour. The questions will focus on the operators' job role(s) and associated tasks and hazards. The aim of the interviews is to explore non-technical skills needed for safe operations within these job roles, and understand any influencing factors (e.g., fatigue). 

The interview process goes something like this:

1. Obtaining consent - within this form we outline anonymity + confidentiality (any personally identifying information is removed), freedom to participate and withdraw, freedom to skip questions etc. It is developed to make sure participants understand what the interview involves and how data is used and stored.  
2. Interview + recording starts:
   1.  Demographics questions: (e.g., time in job role, age)
   2. General job role question (examples):
      1. Can you describe a typical harvesting task, including planning, preparation and actions during it?
      2. What are the main hazards for you and others during forestry tasks?
   3. Critical incident question: We will ask participants to describe a recent incident or problem they were involved with or had to deal with, or an error that occurred. This could encompass something as minor as running late, through to dealing with adverse, problematic or dangerous task conditions. 
   4. NTS specific questions (examples):
      1. What are the key decisions you make during a task?
      2. Have you ever had to make the decision to stop work?  Can you walk me through how you made that decision?
3. Recording stops. Participants can ask any questions they might have. A debrief document is shared after the interview with more information on the project and study. 

The interview will be recorded and transcribed, with the original recording deleted. In the transcription process all identifying information (names, places) will be removed, making the transcript anonymous. All data (recording and transcripts) will be held on a secure, password protected server that can only be accessed by the researchers. All data gathered as part of this study will be used only for research purposes including a PhD thesis project, an industrial report, an academic paper, and may form the basis of future training tools.

The results of this study will be used as part of an ongoing PhD research project, and may result in a written report, academic paper, and training material. Any quotes used for illustrative purposes will be anonymised.

Further information from Aberdeen University’s Applied Psychology and Human Factors Group can be found here, including a paper on chainsaw operator non-technical skills published from previous studies.

For any further information and to set up an interview please email Andrew Sloss of FLS.