Critical Incident Technique
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The Critical Incident Technique (or CIT) is a set of procedures used for collecting direct observations of human behavior that have critical significance and meet methodically defined criteria. These observations are then kept track of as incidents, which are then used to solve practical problems and develop broad psychological principles.
CIT is a flexible method that usually relies on five major areas. The first is determining and reviewing the incident, then fact-finding, which involves collecting the details of the incident from the participants. When all of the facts are collected, the next step is to identify the issues. Afterwards a decision can be made on how to resolve the issues based on various possible solutions. The final and most important aspect is the evaluation, which will determine if the solution that was selected will solve the root cause of the situation and will cause no further problems.
History
The studies of Sir Francis Galton (circa 1930) laid the foundation for the Critical Incident Technique. In its present form however, it can be accredited to the studies in the Aviation Psychology Program of the United States Army Air Forcess during World War II. From then it has spread as a method to identify job requirements, develop recommendations for effective practices, and determine competencies for a vast number of professionals in various disciplines.
Principal Use
CIT can be used in a wide variety of areas. In general it is most useful in the early stages of development of large scale tasks and activity analysis within existing projects. This is mainly due to the method's ability to quickly separate out major problem areas that reside in a system.
In healthcare CIT is used in situations where direct examination of clinical staff and researchers can help them better understand their roles and help them solve practical problems. CIT allows clinical staff to better understand their role in the clinical setting. Another advantage is that it helps them gain better knowledge about their interactions with patients and other clinicians. It also helps clinical staff better understand their practice from a variety of roles (e.g., physician, nurse, clinical educator, nurse informatician, faculty member). In healthcare research CIT can be a good resource in identifying the experiences of a patient in the health care setting, exploring the dimensions of patient-provider interactions and determining patient responses to illnesses and treatments.
CIT is also widely used in organisational development as a research technique for identification of organisational problems. CIT is in this respect used as an interveiw technique where the informants are encouraged to tell about organisational incidents instead of answering direct questions. The idea is that the strengths and weakness of the organisational performance are displayed during unusual procedures (critical incidents). Using CIT avoid the informant express stereotype opinions about management, working procedures etc. but the organisational performance is analysed by assessing the stories.
Advantages & Disadvantages
By identifying possible problems associated with major user-system or product complications CIT recommendations try to make it so that the same type of situations do not result in a similar loss. There are both advantages and disadvantages to using this method.
Advantages
- Flexible method that can be used to improve multi-user systems.
- Identifies even rare events that might be missed by other methods which only focus on common and everyday events.
- Useful when problems occur but the cause and severity are not known.
- Inexpensive and provides rich information.
- Emphasizes the features that will make a system particularly vulnerable and can bring major benefits (e.g. safety).
- Can be applied using questionnaires or interviews.
Disadvantages
- Situations where you cannot observe behavior due to hazards, security, or privacy make it difficult to implement CIT.
- Since critical incidents often rely on memory, incidents may be imprecise or may even go unreported.
- It will emphasize only rare events; more common events will be missed.
- A first problem comes from the type of the reported incidents. The critical incident technique will rely on events being remembered by users and will also require the accurate and truthful reporting of them.
Examples in Informatics / Case studies
- [Providing Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) to Individuals & Communities in Situational Crisis, Joseph A. Davis, Ph.D., LL.D.(hon), B.C.E.T.S., F.A.A.E.T.S. 1998 by The American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, Inc.]
- [Use of the critical incident technique in primary care in the audit of deaths by suicide, Redpath, A Stacey, E Pugh and E Holmes County Durham Health Authority, UK]
- [Audit of deaths in general practice: pilot study of the critical incident technique, Berlin A, Spencer JA, Bhopal RS, van Zwanenberg TD. Medical School, University of Newcastle upon Tyne]
Sources
- http://www.apa.org/psycinfo/special/cit-article.pdf
- http://www.tiu.edu/psychology/Twelker/critical_incident_technique.htm
- http://w3.informatik.gu.se/~dixi/BISON/resources/urquhart%20et%20al%202003.pdf
- http://www.ncchta.org/fullmono/mon919.pdf
- http://www.usabilitybok.org/methods/p2052?section=basic-description
- http://www.ul.ie/~infopolis/methods/incident.html
- http://www.aaets.org/arts/art54.htm
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