Improving the reliability of professional psychological selection of aviation specialists

The research used the Thomas-Kilman Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) (more specifically, TKI-R, the Russian adaptation by N.V. Grishina) psychodiagnostic procedure to assess the behaviour strategy in conflict situations, as well as the Buss-Durkee Inventory to determine the tendency of subjects to various forms of aggressive behaviour. Statistical processing of the findings was done using the Bravais-Pearson correlation coefficient and Pearson’s criterion.

Results. At the first stage of the multipurpose experiment 48 student dispatchers were surveyed, at the second stage the total of 603 subjects were surveyed (students of the Saint Petersburg State University of Civil Aviation and the Institute of Philology, Foreign Languages and Media Communications of the Irkutsk State University), i.e. while emphasizing operator professions in order to improve the validity of the experiment the sample was significantly extended to include, among others, students of the humanities. It was found that the results of the Buss-Durkee Inventory have an inverse correlation with the tendency to an adaptation strategy and direct correlation with the tendency to rivalry and collaboration strategies. According to Pearson’s fitting criterion, there are significant differences in the manifestation of such behaviour styles as rivalry and avoidance between pilot and humanities students, while for the samples of males and females the differences are in the manifestation of such behaviour stiles as rivalry, avoidance and compromise. Females are significantly less inclined to rivalry and somewhat more inclined to avoidance and compromise as compared to males. There are also no observable crucial differences between the intercorrelations of the TKI-R results of the first and second stages of the experiment. The authors’ findings were compared with the published results of the survey of the students of the Tuvan State University and Yaroslavl State Medical University, as well as with the results of surveys of athletes and business owners.

Conclusions. By generalizing own findings and those set forth in other authors’ publications, we can conclude that uncooperative behaviour of all tested students is dominated by average manifestation of strategies of competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating, which indicates the ability of the subjects of this age for flexible behaviour in conflict situations subject to the specific conditions of interaction. That means that students, unlike the success-seeking business owners, while prioritizing collaboration and compromise in conflict situations, flexibly use other behaviour strategies. This must be taken into consideration when planning measures aimed at improving the reliability of professional psychological selection in commercial aviation. It appears that in view of the above reasons, the application of the TKI-R procedure in the professional psychological selection of aviation specialists is unviable.

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