Developing a Subjective Shared Situation Awareness Inventory for Teams

Abstract

This paper presents the development of a subjective shared situation awareness (SA) inventory for distributed teams. Items populating the inventory were developed to incorporate participants' perceptions on key elements of SA, including the sufficiency of shared SA requirements, mechanisms, processes and devices. This inventory was administered during a large-scale distributed, computer-based, military simulation exercise. A reliability analysis showed that, overall, the inventory was highly consistent, and that, over time, instrument reliability increased. Median-split analyses on related constructs of mindfulness, implicit coordination, transactive memory, and motivation also revealed that the gap between high and low scorers increased over time in relation to ratings on the four components of shared SA. These findings indicate that participants better calibrated their perceptions of the quality of shared SA over time and that the relationship between these perceptions and these related constructs strengthened over time with experience in the exercise.