ABSTRACT
Situation awareness (SA) can be formally defined as the “perception of the elements within a volume of time and space (Level 1), the comprehension of their meaning (Level 2), and the projection of their status in the near future (Level 3)” (Endsley, 1995). Because SA is an inferred mental construct, it is somewhat elusive to measure. The most common measures of SA are based on subjective perceptions or ratings of SA (e.g., the Situation Awareness Rating Technique [Taylor, 1990]), which, although easy to administer, have many shortcomings that can distort a participant’s ability to reliably report their SA. For example, participants do not know what they do not know about a work environment, and subjective assessments at the end of a test trial are often affected by performance outcomes and memory decay (Jones, 2000). One alternative method for measuring SA is the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT). It provides an unbiased assessment of individual SA by directly querying operators regarding their current knowledge of the various elements in an environment and comparing their responses to the actual state of the environment.
