Browsing by Author "Young, Hong-Tsu"

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    Approaches to accident investigation by investigators from different cultures
    (2009-09-09T00:00:00Z) Li, Wen-Chin; Young, Hong-Tsu; Wang, Thomas; Harris, Don
    Cultural characteristics play a significant part in aviation (Helmreich & Merritt, 1998). The collective nature of Chinese society is consistent with broad, contextual view of the world and their belief that events are highly complex and determined by many factors. On the other side, the individualistic nature of Western society seems consistent with the focus on particular objects in isolation from their context and with Westerners’ belief that they can know the rules governing objects and therefore can control the objects’ behavior (Nisbett, 2003). Westerners have a strong interest in categorization, which helps them to know what rules to apply to the objects, and formal logic plays a role in problem solving. Chinese attend to objects in their broad context. The world seems more complex to Chinese than to Westerners, and understanding events always requires consideration of many factors that operate in relation to one another in no simple way. From the I-Ching (ancient Chinese philosophical book), ‘for misery, happiness is leaning against it; for happiness, misery is hiding in it. Who knows whether it is misery or happiness? There is no certainty. The righteous suddenly becomes the vicious; the good suddenly becomes the bad’. Chinese is less concerned with finding the truth than with finding the harmony way to live in the world. As the result, Chinese failure to develop science can be attributed in part to lack of curiosity to the true, but the absence of a concept of nature would have blocked the development of science in any case.
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    Do cultural characteristics affect investigation?
    (2009-04-01T00:00:00Z) Li, Wen-Chin; Young, Hong-Tsu; Wang, Thomas; Harris, Don
    Separating the people from the problem assumes an individualist value set underlying the Western approach to investigation. In collectivist cultures, where relationships prevail over tasks, this is an almost impossible demand. Effective investigation for aviation accidents within different cultural contexts demands insight into the range of cultural values to be expected among partners from other countries, in addition to an awareness of the investigator’s own culturally determined values. Effective international investigations also demand language and communication skills to guarantee that the messages sent to the other professional investigators from different cultures with different approaches to accident investigation will be understood in the way they were meant to be. The global interaction between different cultures involves sharing the values of all partners. It is important to know more about the similarities and differences in culture-influenced accident investigation philosophies, e.g., when European and Asian culture collaborate together. The cognitive orientation and mechanisms of Eastern and Western cultures are sufficiently different that they may draw completely different inferences from the same set of data (as in this case), especially in the case where human factors are concerned. The best approach may be to try to understand the events in the accident from the viewpoint of the culture of the pilots/airline involved in the accident and not from the cultural viewpoint of the investigator. This way there might be a better chance that culturally congruent remedial actions can be proposed. However, by better understanding these cultural differences it seems highly likely that they can only serve to complement and enrich each other.
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    Human error prevention: using the human error template to analyze errors in a large transport aircraft for human factors considerations
    (2009-10-01T00:00:00Z) Li, Wen-Chin; Harris, Don; Stanton, Neville A.; Hsu, Yueh-Ling; Chang, Danny; Wang, Thomas; Young, Hong-Tsu
    Flight crews make positive contributions to the safety of aviation operations. Pilots have to assess continuously changing situations, evaluate potential risks and make quick decisions. However, even well trained and experienced pilots make errors. Accident investigations have identified that pilots’ performance is influenced significantly by the design of the flight deck interface. This research applies Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA) and utilizes the - Human Error Template (HET) taxonomy - to collect error data from pilots during flight operations when performing a go-around in a large commercial transport aircraft. HET was originally developed in response to a requirement for formal methods to assess compliance with the new human factors certification rule for large civil aircraft introduced to reduce the incidence of design-induced error on the flight deck (EASA Certification Specification 25.1302). The HET taxonomy was applied to each bottom level task step in an HTA of the flight task in question. A total of 67 pilots participated in this research including 12 instructor pilots, 18 ground training instructor, and 37 pilots. Initial results found that participants identified 17 operational steps with between two and eight different operational errors being identified in each step by answering to the questions based either on his/her own experience or their knowledge of the same mistakes made previously by others. Sixty-five different errors were identified. The data gathered from this research will help to improve safety when performing a go-around by identifying potential errors on a step-by-step basis and allowing early remedial actions in procedures and crew coordination to be made.
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    International cooperation and challenges: Understanding cross-cultural issues in the processes of accident
    (2007-09-03T00:00:00Z) Li, Wen-Chin; Young, Hong-Tsu; Wang, Thomas; Harris, Don
    The idea that national cultural characteristics play a part in aviation safety had been suggested by Helmreich & Merritt (1998). This research involved around 45 aviation accident investigators from different cultural backgrounds and investigated attribution of causal factors in the Ueberlingen accident report through the application of the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (Wiegmann & Shappell, 2003). Hofstede’s (1991 & 2001) cultural dimensions draw a clear picture of the attributable patterns of human errors based on cultural differences. As a result it is necessary to develop a better understanding of the differences in attribution of accident causes and contributory factors across cultures to promote both aviation safety and international cooperation for accident investigation will be achieved. Furthermore, when suggesting safety enhancements resulting from accident investigations it needs to be noted that the same remedy may not work in different cultures. Remedial actions must be 'culturally congruent'. This process starts with understanding the cultural factors at work in the accident investigation process itself.
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    ItemOpen Access
    International cooperation and challenges: Understanding cross-cultural issues in the processes of accident investigation
    (2007-10-01T00:00:00Z) Li, Wen-Chin; Young, Hong-Tsu; Wang, Thomas; Harris, Don
    The idea that national cultural characteristics play a part in aviation safety had been suggested by Helmreich & Merritt (1998). This research involved around 45 aviation accident investigators from different cultural backgrounds and investigated attribution of causal factors in the Ueberlingen accident report through the application of the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (Wiegmann & Shappell, 2003). Hofstede’s (1991 & 2001) cultural dimensions draw a clear picture of the attributable patterns of human errors based on cultural differences. As a result it is necessary to develop a better understanding of the differences in attribution of accident causes and contributory factors across cultures to promote both aviation safety and international cooperation for accident investigation will be achieved. Furthermore, when suggesting safety enhancements resulting from accident investigations it needs to be noted that the same remedy may not work in different cultures. Remedial actions must be 'culturally congruent'. This process starts with understanding the cultural factors at work in the accident investigation process itself.
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    Using HET taxonomy to help stop human error
    (2010-07-01T00:00:00Z) Li, Wen-Chin; Harris, Don; Stanton, Neville A.; Hsu, Yueh-Ling; Chang, Danny; Wang, Thomas; Young, Hong-Tsu
    Flight crews make positive contributions to the safety of aviation operations. Pilots have to assess continuously changing situations, evaluate potential risks, and make quick decisions. However, even well-trained and experienced pilots make errors. Accident investigations have identified that pilots’ performance is influenced significantly by the design of the flightdeck interface. This research applies hierarchical task analysis (HTA) and utilizes the Human Error Template (HET) taxonomy to collect error data from pilots during flight operations when performing a go-around in a large commercial transport aircraft.