Critical Incident Method

Overview of Critical Incident Method

Critical incident method involves gathering data, or incidents, in order to learn how to improve overall performance in various settings. For example, if a manager wanted to improve worker performance, the manager would observe and collect incidents in order to learn how best to improve [Page 300]employee performance. This could prove to be effective in minimizing loss, be it personnel, finances, or property. Once data are gathered through sources such as naturalistic observation, interviews, and recorded phone calls, researchers are able to cluster together, or thematize, events in order to better understand what positive or negative events influenced outcomes.

Throughout literature, an incident is defined as measurable human behavior from which one might draw quantitative or qualitative conclusions. A critical incident is an instance in human behavior that emphasizes or decreases the goals, objectives, or outcome of a particular activity or communicative event in a significant way. Therefore, critical incident method is a methodological tool in which researchers can classify communicative behavior.

In the mid-1950s, critical incident method was developed as a way to better understand why U.S. Air Force pilots in World War II failed to fly. In other words, critical incident method was used to understand why certain pilots were selected, how they were classified, and how they were evaluated. Researcher John Flanagan analyzed pilot instructors’ comments of students who were enrolled in flight-training programs. After reading multiple comments that lacked descriptions such as “poor judgment,” critical incident method emerged as a methodological tool to highlight positive and negative events that contribute to performance. In other words, critical incident method emerged as a tool to serve as a type of communication audit both to gather observations of behavior as well as to determine required competencies as well as ways in which to fulfill such competencies. Since its inception, critical incident method has been used across disciplines such as communication, nursing, marketing, psychology, social work, and business.

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