Validation of the Automation Attitude Questionnaire for airline pilots

Abstract

This article reports on the construction of the Automation Attitude Questionnaire (AAQ), which assesses airline pilots’ perceptions about operating advanced commercial aircraft. A total of 262 airline pilots from a large South African carrier participated in the validation of the instrument. A five-factor measurement model was established after applying several rounds of exploratory factor analysis. The five factors associated with pilots’ perceptions of advanced flight deck automation were labelled understanding, training, trust, workload, and design. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients and the mean inter-item correlation of each factor were highly satisfactory and confirmed the homogeneity and unidimensionality of the five-factor solution for the AAQ.