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SUMMARY. Children attend criminal courts to give evidence both as victims and as bystander witnesses. It is widely accepted that this can be a very stressful experience for children, particularly for those who have been victimised. Before effective reforms can be introduced, it is necessary to identify the principal sources of stress and the possible results of this anxiety on the quality of the child's evidence and on their emotional wellbeing. This article reviews the latest psychological research into the causes and effects of stress on child witnesses taking in evidence from studies in a number of countries, ft is based on recent work by Spencer and Flin (1990)

Managers rarely have full and unequivocal data on their external environment or on the state of their internal processes and in this paper we discuss how they deal with ambiguity, in relation to organizational safety. Drawing on our research into managers' safety intelligence and on the value of chronic unease for safety management, we show how both requisite anxiety and problem solving skills can help managers make the best use of ambiguous safety information.

This paper examines the sources of stress likely to be encountered by emergency managers when responding to a disaster. Stressors relating to environmental (e.g. time pressure, level of risk, heat), organisational (e.g. bureaucracy, appropriateness of information, decision support and management systems) and operational (e.g. incident command, decision making, interagency liaison, team and media management) demands are considered. The mediating role of personality and transient states of physical (e.g. fitness and fatigue) and psychological (e.g. high levels of occupational stress) states are reviewed in terms of their influence on stress, judgement and decision making. Strategies for identifying which of these potential stress factors can be controlled or reduced and for training emergency managers to deal with the others are discussed.

Following civilian disasters such as Piper Alpha, Hillsborough and King's Cross, personnel professionals are rethinking the types of individuals needed to fill senior posts, considering the demands of responding to a serious emergency. Presents the results from a project designed to examine the current selection, training and assessment procedures for managers of offshore oil and gas installations in the North Sea, with particular emphasis on their ability to take command in the event of a serious offshore incident. Personnel and operations managers in 38 oil and gas exploration and production companies in the UK were interviewed. Characteristics sought in an offshore installation manager were leadership and command ability, communication skills, sound judgement, decisiveness and a stable disposition. Selection decisions were based predominantly on the candidate's previous performance, appraisal reports and managerial recommendations rather than more formal methods such as interview panels, assessment centres or psychometric tests. An industry‐wide concern regarding managerial competence has led to increased use of emergency management simulations for training and assessment. The lack of formal assessments during the selection procedure is surprising, but the recent introduction of high fidelity, emergency management simulations present an additional source of valuable information on future candidates if assessment data are collected rigorously.

A relationship between personality and incident/emergency command ability is often assumed to exist, yet little research has explicitly examined such a relationship. Good leaders in emergencies are expected to be calm, decisive under pressure and confident in action. Such qualities, by their very nature, are difficult to gauge in standard selection procedures. This presents organizations with the problem of how to determine whether someone possesses the right personal qualities and skills for a command position. Investigates the potential contribution of a personality questionnaire to the prediction of command and crisis management ability of offshore installation managers (OIM). In an emergency, they are expected to take command and ensure the safety of offshore personnel, which may include their safe evacuation. A total of 154 OIMs completed the Occupational Personality Questionnaire Concept 5.2, of whom 93 were rated by trainers on their ability to deal with a simulated offshore emergency. Discusses correlations of their personality scores with performance ratings and revealed few significant results and the difficulties of finding a test of emergency command ability.

Safety at the Sharp End is a general guide to the theory and practice of non-technical skills for safety. It covers the identification, training and evaluation of non-technical skills and has been written for use by individuals who are studying or training these skills on CRM and other safety or human factors courses. The material is also suitable for undergraduate and post-experience students studying human factors or industrial safety programmes