Measures of Situation Awareness: Review and Future Directions

Abstract : Measures of situation awareness (SA), or what operators know about their immediate situation, are reviewed. Three major approaches to SA assessment are considered: explicit, implicit, and subjective rating. Explicit measures require operators to self-report material in conscious memory. Implicit measures assess the influence of relevant events on subsequent task performance. Subjective ratings require operators to assign numerical values to the self- assessed quality of their SA. These three measurement approaches are evaluated in terms of their reliability and three kinds of validity: construct, content, and criterion. Several problems requiring further research are identified and discussed. In particular, reliability and content validity continue to present serious difficulties, some of which suggest that new approaches to SA measurement may still be needed.... Attention, Reliability, Situation awareness, Memory probe, Signal detection theory, Subjective measures, Mental workload, Validity.