The Flight Risk Perception Scale (FRPS): A Modified Risk Perception Scale for Measuring Risk of Pilots in Aviation

Risk and risk perception remain focal areas of research within the aviation domain. The purpose of the current study was to assess an existing measure of a 26-item self-risk perception scale for pilots. A sample of 490 participants was used in the present study, and a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on the original 26-item instrument. The findings indicated that there was a poor model fit of the original instrument. Through the use of modification indices, a new 13-item scale was produced, which resulted in a second-order CFA model. Flight risk was shown to be the second-order construct with general flight risk, high risk, and altitude risk as the first-order constructs. The new model reported good psychometric values of GFI of 0.933, AGFI of 0.893, CFI of 0.947, NFI of 0.923, normed chi-squared of 3, and RMSEA of 0.071. The findings produce a new 13-item scale that can be used by aviation researchers who wish to conduct studies related to the pilot's self-assessment of risk perception.