2.3.2. Participants

The "key issue in selecting and making decisions about the appropriate unit of analysis is to decide what it is you want to be able to say something about at the end of the study" [46] (p.168). The objective of this study was to investigate individuals' perceptions of how learning from incidents takes place and the obstacles present in the maintenance and continuing airworthiness managemen<sup>t</sup> domain of the aviation industry segment. There were thirty-four (34) participants in total, as presented in Table 3.

Each of the organizations maintained between 6 and 300 aircraft at the time of the study. While traditional reporting and learning themes were evident outputs from the focus group meetings, it was decided that the data would be collected through one-to-one semi-structured interviews. Semi-structured interviews permitted the researchers to ge<sup>t</sup> a deeper understanding of complex organizational and social interactions and at the same time follow a construct. The participating organizations were selected based upon them being accredited to perform aircraft maintenance and continuing airworthiness activities since the inception of EU regulation 1321/2014 [6]. Within this domain, there are categories of sta ff that are required to be aware of incident reporting and make a report as necessary (e.g., technical managers, certifying sta ff, quality assurance sta ff, stores personnel, technical services). Each organization is required under legislation to employ a satisfactory level of sta ff regardless of their aviation activities. As a minimum, at least one of each of these roles was represented in the study. It was ensured that at least one sta ff member from each discipline was included in the study and had made a report in the previous twelve months. As certifying sta ff, technical managers and quality assurance sta ff are by virtue of their position active reporters (due to their exposure to active operations), sta ff in these disciplines were well represented in the study's cohort. Participation in the study was on a voluntary basis and all who participated were acquainted with the project prior to performing the interviews. All participants signed consent forms.


